8' Jack Skellington Puppet

Step 2 Arms and legs

Each arm and leg consists of two pipes -- upper arm and forearm or thigh and
shin. Our elbows and knees are simply a loop of twine threaded through two
holes drilled in each pipe, about .5" from the end. Be sure there's enough
slack in the loop to provide clearance between the two pipes for easy movement.

The limbs are attached to the skeleton similarly. We drilled one hole in each
shoulder and threaded the twine through that hole and out the end, then through
the two holes in the upper arm. To attach the legs, the T joint at the base of
the trunk has three holes drilled through it, one on the left, one on the
right, and one in the front. The left leg is attached to the left and front
holes, the right leg to the right and front holes. This lets the legs swing
and hang without getting bunched up too much. There are two holes drilled
in each "ankle" and then threaded through with .75" or 1" black elastic, tied
off in a loop that will fit snugly around my shoes.

In retrospect, I wish I had made a more rigid hinge for the knees and hips.
They were so long and loose, that they tended to cross each other and get
tangled up while walking with the puppet. You can see that in many of the
photos they are attached to my knees rather than to my feet, just to help keep
them out of the way. I imagine you might have some luck threading the hips and
trunk onto a single bolt to provide movement around just the single axis,
rather than using twine. The same should be done for the knees, I imagine.
The arms worked out great though, because of the control dowels -- we discuss
those later in the instructable.