Audrey 2 for 'Little Shop of Horrors'

Hi there,

First of all, how have I not come across this instructables website before!? It's so much fun looking at what other people have made and got some really good tips in here.

Just thought I'd show you some of the stuff I've made in the past.
Here's a hand puppet I made a couple of years ago for an entertainment company in the UK, I mainly made her out of foam, covered her a bit with latex, acrylic paint and PVA. I wanted to do her teeth with materials I had lying around on the cheap so I used some left over foam board, glued them together in layers and carved out the teeth shapes, painted and covered with PVA for to give it a bit of a shine. She was really good fun to make!

Comments

[lDougie]

I swear there were a couple more comments on here but it's disappeared somehow... I think one of them asked for some 'in the making' photos so I've uploaded some for you!

[SWV1787]

I had a friend who said for a production of little shop of horrors she had to make 3 Audrey 2's on little one in a coffee can that had a servo in it and could hop on remote command, one medium one a hand puppet, and one large one that was controlled by 3 people and large enough to "Swallow" a human. Ever since then I really wanted to make the small one but I don't know much about how to make the skin of puppets and if you could share some of your techniques in the future that would be really appreciated.

[lDougie]

Hello SWV! Yes fortunately I was only asked to make Audrey 2 which was a relief! The company's original one broke apparently and needed a replacement, and I had to make this Audrey look like the other two. If I had to make the gigantic Audrey in my tiny little flat I would have had to be living inside Audrey...which I don't think my finace would have liked...!

For Audrey's skin/surface on this one it was pretty much carving out her skin pattern with a dremel in as much detail as poss, covered with latex glue, then painted with mixture of PVA. I wanted Audrey to have that tropical/jungle plant feel, really thick looking skin tough. After I carved the foam to Audrey's basic shape I thought something like a dremel would be the best way to carve her shape/skin pattern in detail. I've uploaded some 'in the making' photos I've found and you can see a very attractive pic of me with the mighty dremel It was a pretty messy job with bits of foam flying about everywhere and took me about 2-3 days to get the look just right. I needed soft foam so that it was flexible enough for the actor to move it's mouth with their hand inside her. There are probably so many other practical ways to make her, but as I was getting paid very little and without a proper workshop this was the best I could do, on the cheap!

There's one photo I uploaded of an experiment I did for skin effect, just playing about. I painted some bubble rap with latex glue, left it to dry, peeled it off and stuck it on a bit of foam board, painted it and it ended up with with a really nice texture/pattern that looked like veins or something. I think loads of prosthetic artists use latex for textures, it's so much fun.