Day 9&10: Workshop - "Feet and Levers"

Over these 2 days we continued with the construction of the necks and feet. The Lyma Bird Mother's feet were carved out of foam and then covered in Renoflex (a tough sheet material that gets flexible when heated used predominately for shoe and boot construction) to create a hard shell. This sheet will then allow the puppeteer to were the feet almost like a shoe...so in fact we are using a material for the purpose it is designed for, a rare occasion in puppet building!

We were also working on the mechanisms for the heads. The mother bird will have two levers one to move the head up and down and another to open and close the mouth. The extra head articulation will allow more freedom with the range of expression from the mother bird. For the hatchlings we only gave them mouth articulation has the puppeteer only has one hand controlling the head. We linked up the hatchling's mechanisms with piano wire, and this gives strong lever control so that the mouth can be opened and closed with as little effort as possible.

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