A while back I had to replace my passport. The lady taking my fingerprints said they were too faint to be picked up on camera which can happen with age. But I wondered if making eyebrows for our Zero puppets was actually to blame! Let me explain.
Our Zero puppets had somewhat limited movements, so it was important to give them eyebrows to help convey their emotions.
My MO—create 50 animatable eyebrows.
We considered using plasticine, but that aesthetic wasn’t quite right for our woollen puppets.
We thought about cutting them from felt and using Vaseline to stick and move them on the face, but that would have been too messy.
And we thought about adding them in digitally, but that’s a costly exercise and wouldn’t look as integrated.
The solution? I soaked cotton thread in superglue, shaped them into a gentle curve with my fingers and set a pin inside it. Once the eyebrows dried, I snipped them into shape.
The eyebrows and pin were then pushed into the foam heads and we could rotate them like little windmills. Instant expression!
Super glue is the absolute worst; I lost a lot of skin from my hands during this period. And quite possibly my actual fingerprints.
