Building Mr Rhys Oldman

There are fourteen human puppets used in Catnapping. Each puppet is based around a wire skeleton, which is then built upon with pipecleaners and finally a plastisene exterior and hand sewn clothes.

I used a drill to spin wire together, and shaped this into the starting frame of a skeleton. This is the bit that needs to be strongest for my bipedal dolls (the legs, hips and spine).

I then shaped the excess loop of wire at the head end of the spine into shoulders, roughly the width of the hips.

I twisted in wire for arms along the shoulder and securing it round the torso. The skeleton for the arms does not need to be as strong as the spine and legs, and usually needs to have a lot more mobility – this is why using a single wire is preferable.

I then began to build up the shape of the doll with pipecleaners. I secured the pipecleaner by twisting it and threading it into the wire of the skeleton or onto other, already secured pipecleaners. I try to follow the shape of muscles and joints, keeping in mind the direction and point of probable movement in the limbs.

It took several iterations before I perfected the pipecleaner wrap: wrapping the skeleton too tight will mean that the movement of the doll is hampered, and wrapping the skeleton too loose will create a lumpy and insecure skeleton which will fall apart or become misshapen during animation.

I decided to use pipecleaners to build up the mass of the puppet to keep it light and therefore less likely to topple over - this was particularly useful as I was not using tie-downs in my animations. I also found that the costumes would stick to plasticine limbs and become soiled by them, and the limbs themselves would become more quickly misshapen as a result.

I left four strands of pipecleaner loose at the end of each arm; these would become the fingers, thumbs and hands of the character – it is best to leave ample excess as they can be sized right at the end of the character building process.

Once I was happy with the skeleton, I secured trousers with dungarees over the shoulders and fitted a t-shirt to the torso.

I wrapped more pipecleaners around the head.

I built up the areas of exposed skin – arms, hands, neck, head and shins – with plasticine (for Mr Rhys Oldman, purple plasticine) and made heavy shoes, also out of plasticine, to ensure his balance when standing up.