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Puppet Of The Week - Clock

Tuesday, 16 August 2005

The Talking Clock is a good example of the many processes that go into making a puppet craft book. For every project that makes it there are two others that get rejected. Sometimes I've just had to make a slight materials change to a design but other times an entire concept gets tossed. This is one of those projects that got scrapped altogether. I'm not sure what possessed me to want to make a talking clock. Maybe I was thinking about the talking grandfather clock on the Captain Kangaroo show.

By looking at the shape of the eyes and the use of a paper plate for a face you can see that the Talking Clock strongly resembles the Nutty Bear from Puppet Mania. When I went back through my best puppets for the book I realized that I was repeating myself in basic material structure and composition. I needed to choose between the two puppets and the Nutty Bear won out due to its eye mechanism and plushness. The Talking Clock may have been a fun puppet to paint or decorate but the workings of the clock were not quite refined enough to be easily blocked out into project steps.

The one redeeming quality of the Talking Clock was its moving mouth. I had figured out a way to use an elastic band to spring the mouth closed. All you had to do to open it was push down on the mouth bars and release them to have it close again. Everything was mounted to a colorful gift box which started out as another project idea. The Running Rabbit was born from my failed attempt at making a marionette that was attached to the lid of a box and would return to the bottom of the box for storage. When I didn't use the box for this puppet I borrowed it for the clock. I guess this happy box just wasn't meant to be in my puppet book.

As I go over these pictures I can see that this clock would have needed a total redesign to get a thumbs up. Not only do I have to be satisfied but my editor plays a big role in what makes it or not. David Oeters and I work closely on every aspect of my books and in most cases he guides me in directions I might not have gone on my own. I think he felt that the Talking Clock was a little too complicated to fit all of the steps into the allotted pages of the book. It's good to have a practical person watching out for you.