All the better to see, hear and TASTE you with!... Making Mr. Wolf

DESIGN

DEVELOP
The 1st attempt... 
My first idea for the wolf was to be a sock puppet. I chose this form of puppetry because I wanted to work with felt, which I thought would emphasise the wolf's characteristics, such as the gleaming white teeth. I also did want to achieve a sock puppet because I thought that it would also be the best type of puppet for a talking character, as well as a big mouth to eat the Grandma. I planned to glue on eyes and make ears which would be placed on the top of the head.

Some photos of the first wolf prototype being developed:

Test the puppet (identify the problems)... and redesign!
After developing this sock puppet and trialling it; I realised some problems.
1. The wolf didn't look mean enough
2. It was hard to make the ears and eyes stand out; which are the characters main attributes in the story.

I then looked around my home and found some recyclable items (a cereal box) that gave me the idea to use as the main body of the wolf! I thought that I could use the sock puppet I already had as the mouth and nose of the wolf through a hole in a cereal box which I would paint black. I would stick my hand up the opened cereal box and then put my hand through the hole and control the puppets mouth to emphasise it's talking. This way I could also glue furry ears on top of the box where they could be seen, eyes that could stand out for the audience to see (and were more wolf like). I was excited with this puppet as I thought it would really suit the character!

Test, evaluate and re- design x3 

I was very happy with how this puppet came out, all my ideas and assumptions about how the puppet would operate were effective. I didn't have any problems with the construction of the puppet, which I was overjoyed about because I wanted something to go right for a change! However there was only one problem that I wasn't completely happy with, which was that the mouth/ sock of the puppet was very stretched and therefore did not look as effective as I'd thought, as well as work very well. The bottom of the mouth was only the size of my thumb.

To find a solution to this problem, I once again had to go back to the research stage. I did not want to change my whole puppet, but just find a simple and effective solution. I found this in Susie Hodge's puppet book (2005). It was simply to use a circle shaped piece of cardboard folded in half (measured to the size of my puppets mouth) and put this inside the mouth to make it sturdy and usable.