Sunday, November 12, 2006

Making a carved wooden marionette

UPDATE **

Please visit my dedicated site on making wooden puppets:
www.carvingpuppets.com

A video tutorial is available to watch (or download) here:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/makingmarionettesproj1


Introduction.

There are many different ways to make a marionette, no right or wrong ways, just variations in materials used, joint techniques and controller designs.

The type I will be making will be an all wood carved marionette. I will be making a human character however do not limit yourself, animals or abstract shapes can be marionettes too as we can see from the following picture of a simple lion marionette.

Wooden Lion Marionette


The detail of the carving can be varied depending on your ability, you may want to paint in details such as the face if you haven't got the skill to carve it. The marionette I will be making will be quite detailed but hopefully you can follow the principals and simplify where necessary


So lets look at some more examples of wooden marionettes.

Simple wooden shapes threaded with cord are used to create a character.(click on image to enlarge)



Wooden Knight Marionette

Below are some marionettes made in Prague, notice the angular shapes and in some of the puppets even the pelvis/leg joints are visible. (click on image to enlarge)


Wooden Marionettes

Here's a marionette from one of my favourite makers Antonin Muller:>




So there's some ideas for you in preparation for the next stage which will concentrate on the design of the character.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

awww was part 2 ever written? This seemed like it was going to be good!

Anonymous said...

Im a really big fan of carved wooden marionettes and these are just great

Anonymous said...

Those marionettes are cool I would like to make one

Naomi said...

I'm just wondering if this series was continued? I browsed your posts til 2008, but didn't see anything. I'd love to include your series of tutorials (if there are more) on a list of free marionette patterns on my website.

Tony said...

Naomi, yes there are other parts which I will be reposting soon. I removed them because they were being copied without credit - usual story of the internet.