Dinosaur Head Puppet

This Instructable will be showing you how to create your very own dinosaur head/puppet. I was inspired by the full body dinosaur costumes and puppets that have been going viral on many sites and videos. So I decided to create my own!

• Sculpting Clay
• Armature Stand
• Polystyrene
• Foam
• Silicone
• Fiberglass
• Fast Cast
• Paints
• Sculpting tools
• Water
• Plastic Bags
• Stretchy Fabric ( Lycra)

Read the instructable first before attempting or buying any of this as you may choose to do parts differently or only need certain parts of the dinosaur.

Begin by attaching a thick chunk of polystyrene to your armature stand. This should be smaller than your intended design but big enough to fill the insides. This is to reduce weight and waste as little clay as possible. Make sure this is firmly on using glue or cable ties.

I began by sculpting the top half of the dinosaurs (Raptor) head.

Sculpting always involves a lot of research before hand and the best advice I can give is to practice a ton and to always be referencing images of the things you wish to sculpt. I have attached some reference photos here to show how the certain ridges and form was created.

I started by creating a basic shape and applying ridges and attempting to get the skull into the perfect shape.

I created a lower jaw template too, so I could reference this and see if it looked correct. The reason behind this was that I was making my dinosaur a puppet and chose to create the lower jaw in plastazote foam to show a range of material experience in my portfolio.

Once the initial shape was sculpted I continued by adding each individual scale one by one. Always referencing images for patterns and shape and size.

This was quite a long process but I felt that overall it looked a lot better and I felt like I had a lot more control.

Your clay may begin to dry throughout this process so periodically spray your clay to keep it moist or drape wet tissue over the clay.

Also, if you wish to leave your clay over night to continue the next day. Spray your sculpt with water vigorously and wrap it in a plastic bag.

I then added a pair of eye templates into the sculpt, these were the same size as the glass eyes that were on order. These were inserted only to create a mold with. This allows for eyelids to be sculpted in also.

The next stage is to cover her in silicone, to do this you must first build a wall of clay around the lower jaw to catch the excess silicone. Make sure this is firmly on and quite thick.

Next apply two to three layers of silicone to form a mold and once this is dry you will then apply two or three layers of thin fiberglass to form a jacket and mother mold. There are many tutorials online which go through these processes in much more detail.

Once these are dry, remove the clay and clean our your mold.

Then inside of the silicone mold apply two very, very thin layers of fiberglass.

Leave this to dry and then remove your dinosaur head.

You can repair any bubbles or breakages with either car body filler or fiberglass.

At this point I painted over the fiberglass head with a solid white primer.

Then using plastazote and a soldering iron I sculpted and burned the lower jaw into shape and soldered in some scales.

I also made some rings for the neck mechanism and attached a bar inside the head for support.

I then sew on the lycra sheet to the underneath of the jaw to create the same wobbly skin effect and began painting the head, jaw and neck using a variety of spray paints and acrylic paints. This is a very slow process when adding a ton of detail. But if you take your time it will come out a lot better.

To create the teeth and claws I used the same method.

Begin by sculpting the teeth and claws in clay.

Create a wall for pouring silicone, pour silicone and leave to dry.

Cut original clay out and clean the mold.

Cast them using fast cast.

Clean up and paint.

Then attach to the dinosaur using glue.

Then using a backpack and metal rods I began to create the suit to carry my beast upon.

This is the stage I am up to currently and I will be completeing him in the next few weeks and including updates! He needs some more body work and skin arms, legs and a lot of paint detail. However I am very pleased with how it is going so far!