The foundation of all great puppets is their character. What is their personality? Why do they do what they do? Once that is established, you begin to design them so that their physical appearance conveys that character. This may take some work and some re-working to get just the right look. Even with the best design, however, the puppet can take on a life of its own during the building process and the character can become even more concrete in surprising ways.
I will use Jammer, the orangutan for Chimp TV as an example. He was designed by the multi-talented Pasha Romanowski of Project Puppet. Now Jammer is a hard rocking orangutan that is high energy and has bad hearing due to years of loud music. He has a slightly crazy edge to him. In one of the original designs, below, you can see that the character is starting to take shape. The rock elements are there, but the energy isn’t quite reflected yet.

In the final design, the character is defined further and given more energy by the crazy look in the eye and the large teeth that give him that crazy smile.

As he was being built, little things came into play that gave him that definite character. In shape, he actually became a hybrid of the two designs above, but with the spirit of the final design as seen in the teeth and eyes.

So you can see, puppet building is an involved process to get to the heart of a character. Because the better a character is designed, the better he will translate to an audience. Puppetry is visual, and if the puppet can give clues to his character before he even moves, the puppeteers job becomes more effective.

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