Following up from the making of Miss Trunchbull this post will go tough the making of the little girl Puppet. This is Amanda Thripp, the character from the book / film that is picked up by her pigtails spun around and thrown over the fence by the Trunchbull,
As his charters main focus is here hair I started making the head first. I took a bunch of hair extensions and sculpted the head out of milliput around base of them. As this character has to look very sweet and cute I wanted to give her big oversized brown eyes and I added the glasses as a nice call back to the film. Once the head was dry it was time to paint it, I did this in very much the same style that I painted Miss Trunchbull with, mutable quick coats on acrylic.
I then drilled holes on either side of the head and glued in wire with 2 part epoxy. Taking the hair extensions I twisted them around the wire and then twisted the wires together to create the pigtail hair style that can also be animated. Leftover hair was also used to make the front and back of the wig as well as touch up patches in the pigtails. To make the glasses I took some 2mm thick wire and using a metal tube I bent and shaped the wire into the styles of glasses I wanted and spayed them white.
As this character would not be getting much animating in her body I decided to make here using a basic aluminium wire armature with K&S tubing for the head. I used the basic brass joints from AnimationToolkit for the chest and hip blocks and cut the wire to size for the arms and legs. Once happy with the size I would then cover the armature in sponge foam to bulk out the body for some shape.
The next step was to make her costume. This was made with a very basic dress pattern that was hand stitched; I added wire on the inside to help it keep its shape while animating. The sleeves and leggings were made separately then added to the dress. The final step was to add the hands that are made out of super sculpey, painted in the same style as the head and attached to the wire armature with a 2-part glue.
Here is the final Amanda Thripp it’s time to get animating these 2!!