Cosmute Puppets

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(Below): Sasha Bond and Jake Eiseman-Renyard at the Coppetts Wood Festival in 2023, in who were also face-painted to match their suits! This picture was taken by fellow-puppeteer Kimber Wright.

When are a puppet and a costume the same thing? This Mouse-Hoodie, with added gloves (each finger of which was made into a mouse or rat, too) was used for the effect of a "tidal wave" of Mice and Rats charging at the protagonists in the final showdown scene in Duck Whittington. The Mice and Rats added to it were both scratch-made from leftover cloth, as well as modified soft toys (on various scales) of rodents, lions, bears, rabbits and even kangaroos, hippos and elephants!

Here's how a Cosmute Puppet is made from scratch! We were asked to make an Electric Eel character. One eagle-eyed member of the team spotted (no pun intended!) this child-sized duffle-coat in a charity shop and bought it to make the outer skin.

(Below): Work began on Alec Tricity, the Electric Eel. 2 umbrella's main rods were used as the pivots to carry him on and control him from. His body was originally just rags, ropes and elastic cords, tied together into a long, thin "train". The head was the hardest part to make; carved from polystyrene (recovered from former packaging) it was attached to the front umbrella-rod with an unwound wire coat-hanger, driven into the head as far as the fixed, upper jaw and reinforced with heavy-duty glue.

(Above and below): More rags were added to the inner body. The polystyrene head was "mummified" with tape to protect it and preserve its shape.

Alec's outer-skin goes on! It was sewn around the flexible armature and stuffed where necessary for strength and for its shape.

Alec was left open at both the front and rear ends, for now, to allow for the movable lower jaw and tail fin to be added, respectively.

More outer skin is added over the head. Alec's lower, movable jaw, attached to the umbrella-spoke connected to the front main rod, was made from strong cardboard, sewn on at the joint to the head and covered with the "skin".

The inside of Alec's mouth comes from the lining of the duffle-coat that made his outer skin!

Stitching of Alec's main body is just-about complete.

The rear umbrella-handle had an upside-down L-bend of unwound coat-hanger wires (and other padding and piping, plus some tape) added to it, sticking out of his main body, to build the fish-tail onto.

For his main fins, Alec needed some sturdy cardboard inside as an armature or skeleton. Like Cosmute, the manufacturer of this box believes recycling is important. The text read something like "We believe in the afterlife: give this box a happy one by re-using it." I certainly did re-use it, though probably not in the way the manufacturer was expecting!

Stitching the cardboard for the "skeleton" of Alec's upper and lower fins onto his main body.

After some trial and error, the cardboard packaging, once cut into shape, was stitched onto Alec's top and bottom sides, including his fish-tail.

Alec is starting to look ship-shaped (or fish-shaped!). The covering for the cardboard in the long fins came from a worn-out black sweater.

As with many of the Cosmute puppets, an umbrella-spoke mechanism was used to give him a moving lower jaw.

The small "fins" were made from the cuffs of the same former black sweater. More obviously, Alec also has eyeballs! True to tradition, the eyes were left until last (well, almost last as you'll see underneath)

Alec the Eel can now appear to "spark", with Christmas-tree fairy-lights wrapped around him, controlled from a button on the battery-pack attached to the front umbrella-rod. Alec has since been to in shows at live festivals and parades and is a great example of what Cosmute can make from scratch for shows. Maybe singing the "scales" should be left to the singers, Alec!

As there was some fur left over from the duffel-coat, we decided to see if we could make a Leopard-Seal (on a much smaller scale to Alec!)

An example of the kind of shape we had in mind. This walk-along Seal-puppet was modified from a soft toy, with the same kind of working parts put in as that in the sketch above, once the stuffing was removed.

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