Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Maker Profiles: The Unworldly Puppets of David Haaz-Baroque”.
Me puppetry is something i’ve kind of done on and off since i was eight stopped for a little bit when i was in my my teen years and picked it back up again in my early 20s and originally as a kid. I would just make puppets out of found objects and trash basically and then later on, mostly by watching making of dvds, i learned how to sculpt and cast latex puppets, which is what i’ve been doing ever since so later. On in march, i have been booked to perform at a doctor who art show and doctor who has always been one of my favorite shows ever since i was a little kid, so i already had a puppet of one of the characters: the silence so i’m making A puppet of the 11th doctor and we’re going to be doing a puppet show of doctor who, at the doctor who art show so my process for building the puppets, is first, i build a sculpt of what i want it to look like out of non-hardening clay. I’Ve been using the same clay for almost 20 years now, so the clay that i sculpt my puppets out of now pretty much made every puppet. In my studio and after i’ve made the non-hardening sculpt, i make a plaster cast of that pull the clay sculpt out, replace it with liquid latex rubber, and when that dries, we have a rubber puppet.
So after you’ve made the clay sculpt you’re going to want to prep it ahead of time before you put the plaster on because you want it to be easy to get the sculpture out and they do make mold release. It’S made out of silicone and different things. Like that, i tend to just use cooking oil because it’s significantly cheaper and then later you can use it to make french fries with so the apartment. I’M in now is a one bedroom which, in the bay area, is practically a palace. Before before i was here, i was in a 10 by 10 studio, so this is actually a lot of a lot more space than i used to work with, and almost everything i do is probably an example of what you shouldn’t do, because the plaster gets everywhere.
Everything gets everywhere. I always keep a slot bucket when i’m rinsing off tools and everything uh when i’m making the plaster cast, because you don’t want that in your sink that’ll, almost guarantee that you’ll ruin your sink almost immediately. So a lot of the techniques i’m using today, you should probably be a bit more careful about than than i am what i’m working on in in this shoe is kind of a little bit anomalous.
I usually don’t work on human characters and i most of my puppets are creatures and i think i enjoy being able to make a character. That is something you obviously would not see in nature. I like being able to make completely fantastical creatures and then being able to create a personality for them.
The personality usually being a lot more uh bass and crude than their fantastic elements would probably suggest i’ve been doing this long enough that i should absolutely be better at making two-sided molds for for those of you that don’t know most of mine uh. Most of my puppets have one-sided mold, which means basically just one slab of plaster on top, but some things that uh have more of a muzzle like my velociraptor puppet is made with a two-sided mold, which means that it’s actually two plaster molds stuck together. And then you pour the latex inside it’s a it’s, a pretty basic tool for casting i’m terrible at it.
I’Ve never been able to master it. I do one once every couple of years my my partner bought me a dvd from stan winston studios to try and teach me how to do it still terrible at it, and i know it’s it’s a very basic thing, but i’m just i’m awful at it. I’D love to be able to figure out how to do the mechanics of moving eyes and things like that terrible mechanical things like that uh, i think i’m doing decently, or at least better at the sculpting and you .