Sew Your Own Puppet Clothes & Say “Goodbye” to Baby Clothing
Baby clothing makes your awesome puppet look amateur
Baby clothing doesn’t fit or look good on a puppet. Knock your client’s socks off by designing a professional look for every character needing costuming.
Good design right down to the clothing
Part of the overall success of your work will rely on nailing costuming as a supporting feature of your character. Planning in advance is key. Sketching out your ideas not only helps you explore the different options that might work for your character, it helps create a roadmap on how to move forward when you build. It can also function as a part of the design contract with your client.
Sketching “Cheat Sheet” Template
To save time in the sketching process I often use a template. It’s a time saving “cheat” that helps me explore multiple ideas more quickly and decide which option is best. If I’m building my character’s body using the Project Puppet Simple Series Alternate Torso pattern than I use that template with it’s body outline as the basis of my sketch.
To help you start your journey with costume design, I’m sharing my design template for the Simple Series Alternate Torso pattern. You can get this free template by subscribing below..
If you are interested in the torso pattern itself. It’s available here:
Torso pattern here at project Puppet
The template is great fun to play with! It takes the work out of sketching. I left enough space at the top so you can sketch the head of your puppet as well. You can use tracing paper to quickly sketch over the paper template multiple times to explore multiple ideas.
Digital Design
Alternately, you can also upload it into ProCreate or Abode Illustrator and sketch digitally. I like ProCreate on my iPad for this. You can create new layers to separate elements or different costume ideas. This comes in handy if your client requests changes. You can alter only the associated layer that needs altering and save yourself time. I hide all the layers except the one or two that hold my favorite sketch when I share it with my client. You can hide the template itself and put in your own logo! Even if I’m building for myself, I make a sketch. I can always change my mind during the build, but having a sketch means I’m more purposeful when I build and I have a roadmap to work on during days when I’m feeling less creative. I just follow my initial vision.
Questions to Lead your Designing Phase
Good questions to ask yourself as you make decisions are: What elements in the costume could help tell the audience who this characters is? You can suggest age, personality and interests, gender, historical timeframe, and storyline context.
I’d love to see what you do with this template. You can even use them to have your kids create ideas for you;) You can send pictures of your designs to my email at pam@lapuppets.com if you would like to share what you’ve done. I’d love to see it!
Click the box below to learn more about the t-shirt and the dress you see in the photos above.
T-shirt pattern HERE at Live action puppets
