Building a new rockstar marionette

This is a design I drew for a Rockstar marionette a few years ago. The puppet is a commissioned piece for a San Fransisco street performer. Initially I had done two different designs for him. He commissioned the other puppet from me at the time; a Hip-Hop DIva which I built for him and he has been performing with regularly. Now he has asked me to go forward with this puppet so he can expand his performance repetoire.

I have really set a challenge for myself with this puppet by decising to tend away from  the design drawing and show her belly. She already shows her shoulders, knees and elbows. What this means is that I have to be very clever in my joint making so that, from any distance, her joints will appear seamless. This is very difficult in the torso section because it moves so much. Here's what I've come up with so far...

Here you can see the upper torso, belly and pelvis pieces are finished and I have more work to do on the legs. The arms and neck will all be ball & socket joints giving the most seamless transition possible. The trick of this puppet is giving her enough range of motion without letting her center section rotate around. It would be pretty strange if her belly button migrated around to her spine! In my next entry, I'll talk about how I solve that problem.

Thanks for reading,

~Geahk