And thats the puppets! I might try and do a similar thread for how the sets were made as well. And eventually the actual animation and post-production. Hope you enjoy!

Her skin was also felt, and her dress was a thin fabric with wire inside. I wanted a billowing look to her skirt, and one that I could manipulate within the shot, which ended up being a major pain to death with, but thats the nature of these things.

Her hair was made up of layers of wire and felt. I’d wrap a bit of wire with some felt, glue it together, twist into curls, then glue those to the wires on her head. The idea was to keep her hair mobile enough to still be animated in shot.

Aphrodite was both simpler and more complex. Her design had a lot more moving parts, with her floating all the time, and her hair moving on its own. The core was similar with wire limbs, but I added wires coming out of the head to attach her hair to. And no legs of course.

The solution I got to was a material called DAP, which I’d never heard of before, but was used by cosplayers to put a flexible plastic coat on top of foam. So I gave it a shot, and it worked like a charm!

At the 11th hour, I remade the puppet almost entirely from scratch. I wanted to keep the musculature from the carved foam and coat it without the form gettng lost, or the puppet itself looking too much like just painted foam.

My initial attempt was to go very traditional, with a base of wire and foam, and a skin of foam sportswrap and liquid latex. This didn’t work. I ended up carving fairly complex musculature that got completely lost by the process of using the sports wrap.

I made Hephaestus first, wanting him to be very musclular and geometric. The idea was to make him and Aphrodite appear made of contrasting materials. Hephaestus would be rough and rock-like, and Aphrodite would be soft and fuzzy.

Aiming for March! 🤞