A very rough sketch for the completed installation:

Josiane Keller “installation set-up sketch” (2021)

So far today:

the hair needs a different tone yet it is not quite the right colour:

Josiane Keller “hair test” (2021)

My favourite: miniature jaws, perfectly creepy. An update from Edie, who has only a moveable lower jaw, and when she talks in films it looks a bit like she is chattering her teeth. But once these were fired I realized I had made a mistake (again, and I won’t tell what it is, as if you notice it great if not I won’t give it away), so the next puppet with already get a new adjustment. For this project it will probably be OK:

Josiane Keller “moveable miniature jaws 2” (2021)

Eye-lashes: gorgeous strawberry red-coloured chicken feathers turned out to be too stiff after all, so I’m going with ostrich feathers instead:

Josiane Keller “ostrich feather eye lashes” (2021)

Lizzie is assembled; the joints have to be loose for natural movement, but stiff enough to hold a pose to take a still shot for films (stop-motion animation); I have found this to be an essential element in puppet making for puppet animation, against all lessons out there to keep the joints radically loose; stability is the death of natural movement; most creatures slouch and use only minimal energy for each movement, the rest is done by weight; if you make a puppet that is stable as one would want it to make a stop motion animation, you will kill all natural body language; so in my work I have a totally different approach that I find brings more realistic results; obviously at the price of easy production, so you need to be clever to find ideas how to deal with that once it comes to filming.

Josiane Keller – Lizzie assembled

Josiane Keller “Lizzie assembled close-up” (2021)