Little Brother: The Puppet Pt I

I'm collaborating with super talented Puppet Designer, Jarrod Boutcher on a puppet. I've mentioned a few times, that my daughter likes to play a game we call Little Brother. She plays herself, or more recently a teenage version of herself, and I play her bratty 2 year old brother. As such, I get into lots of trouble and she acts as the authority. She gets to punish, yell, and be the sibling whose good at just about everything. I think it's very therapeutic role reversal for her, which is why I've played it with her for so many years now. However, it is a bit repetetive and awkward for me. How many times can a grown man pretend to be a two year old? Anyway, when I was discussing with Jarrod about a puppet that I'd like to order, it suddenly dawned on me that a Little Brother puppet would make this game a lot more enjoyable. I have Little Brother's personality more well defined than his actual look, and since I trust Jarrod's design instincts so well, I've given him lots of description but only a few rough sketches.

The page of drawings above didn't feel quite right. The two at the bottom were better, but he looked too old. Little Brother should just past the toddler stage, where a kid is talking and walking and mobile enough to be trouble, but not old enough for school. Preschool maybe. We often say he's two but I think he's a bit older.

A lot of what I know about Little Brother has just come from playing the game so much and trying to be consistent with him. My daughter knows when I change something about him. He's obsessed with Spider Man, so I've asked Jarrod to put him in a Spider Man shirt. Other than that, he just wears a diaper. He's usually messy, with a small patch of uncombed hair. He goes from happy to angry really quick, so there's going to be an eyebrow mechanism to accomplish this. And I also wanted him to be able to kinda snicker mischeviously, and I noticed that Oscar the Grouch has a unique mouth, in that besides opening up and down, it also has a bit of side to side play. So I thought that would be good to allow little brother to snicker. Below are some of the progress shots that Jarrod has put on his blog.

The basic head shape.

Look what a great match that is for the design on the second page of sketches.

How do you cover a round form? Skin for the head.

The skin, laid loose over the form of the head, with some foam for cheeks added.

Believe it or not, these are arm patterns.

And the inner structure of Little Brother's pudgy little arms.

More to come...