The Tumbles P. Bear Project

Part Two: Let's Make Some Arms!

The next step was to sketch out patterns for Tumbles' hands. After refining the shape I wanted after three or four attempts I made a pattern and traced out two (one reversed) for each hand on to a foam sheet. Since Tumbles' hands will be fairly small and need to be flexible I decided to use a fairly soft 1/2-inch sheet of foam to make them. I cut out each piece taking special care to stay inside the lines (a good habit to develop). Remember that two pieces are needed for each hand, with one cut reverse (the pattern is flipped over) so they will match together properly.

Before the hands could be glued together a strip of wire has to be bent in to the shape of the hands so it can be "sandwiched" between two halves when they are glued together. This makes the fingers poseable and will allow Tumbles to grasp objects and make more gestures. Because Tumbles' hands (er, paws?) were going to be fairly small I used 30 gage copper wire, but normally I tend to use 25 gage wire. In addition to gluing the edge of each hand piece, it's usually a good idea to glue the wire itself as well.

Before actually gluing the hands together I also placed a wire running through each finger. Again, normally I would use 25 gage wire for this, but since I am working with 30 gage I decided to just twist two pieces of wire together to make them stronger. Once these wires were glued to one half of the hand the hands I placed the other wire between them and pinched them together.

Finally, I twisted all of the excess wire sticking out of the hand using pliers (that excess will come in handy later) and wrapped the wires in black cloth tape so the sharp ends won't poke through Tumbles' arm later on.

Next I cut four pieces of wooden doweling - two for each arm. The upper arm dowels were cut to be the exact length of the upper arm. The lower arm dowels were cut to be approximately half the length of Tumbles' forearm, which is very important to give the puppet the maximum amount of movement possible. For each arm the upper arm dowel and lower arm dowel were placed end to end. I then cut out a small piece of cloth which was glued to the dowel and wrapped around half of it. I used Elmer's all-purpose white glue (mostly because it's non-toxic), but contact cement could be used as well for faster results and a stronger bond. Once this is finished and the adhesive has dried the arm was only be able to bend in one direction, just like a real arm.

Next I used another cloth strip to attach the lower arm dowel to the excess copper wire sticking out of the hand. The cloth tape used on the excess wire will make it easier to bond the wire to the dowel. I also glued a long strip of cloth to the top of the upper arm dowel, leaving lots of excess at the top. This was used later to attach the arm to the body.

Once all that was complete the arm looked like this:

#1 - Cloth strip (to be attached to puppet body) #2 - Upper arm dowel #3 - Elbow joint (where the two dowel ends meet) #4 - Cloth strip (joins lower arm dowel and hand) #5 - Hand

Once the armature for Tumbles' limbs was finished I decided to flesh them out a bit. As seen on the left, the arms were traced out on 1/2" foam, cut out and glued around the dowel-arms. They are shorter than the actual length of the arms (extending the length of the dowels). A horizontal slit was be cut in the inside of each arm and I fed the excess cloth strip glued to the top of the dowels #1 in the picture above) through the slit prior to the foam arms being glued together.

In the midst of all this I realized that Tumbles' head was slightly pointy. To correct this problem, I carefully made cuts in the top of the head (see below left). This in turn caused Tumbles' cheeks to puff too much so wedge shape cuts were made in them to reduce their size as well. I also cut out a hole where Tumbles' mouth will be and drew in eyes, mostly just for fun.

With his head taking shape and with his adorable little arms pinned on (they will be permanently attached later) Tumbles is finally starting to look like a plump little bear.

 
Click here to go to part three