Large-Scale Puppet Example: Tauntaun

This Tauntaun puppet from Star Wars is a good example of a large puppet with fake legs. It also utilises a pair of plastering stilts to gain height and make the puppet a more accurate comparison to the movie piece. It has limited movability; the head and neck do not hinge, there is no moving jaw and whilst the tail looks like it could have some swing to it, it doesn't have any movement mechanism inside of it. However, the sheer size and height of the puppet still make it impressive; it's a large beast that dwarves the people around it and attracts attention.

The finished puppet seems to be lacking some finishing touches; the way the maker has made it entirely out of one type of fur means the body lacks visual interest, especially with no kind of shading. The head looks nice - it is made of expanding foam, which is a good material for pieces without a moving jaw but can be fragile in thin pieces. In this example, it works well because the head is one large chunk, so has no way of collapsing.

The legs look a little small for the wearer; it's obvious they've patterned them from just a couple of tubes, or even just stuffed a pair of trousers and put some boots on them. This is an absolute pet peeve of mine when it comes to 'rider' type puppets as it's not very difficult to make a realistically proportioned pair of legs; even if it results in the legs looking large on the puppet, at least they are a believable size and don't break the illusion of the puppeteer riding the puppet.

It appears that the maker has used an aluminium backpack-type frame to attach the body of the Tauntaun to himself. I plan to make a similar frame, but one that doesn't come so far up the back as not to be visible under the puppeteer's clothes; it also feels a little bit over the top for the smaller bird's body. By making a smaller structure as a back brace, I can disguise it as a saddle, adding security whilst allowing the puppeteer to still wear cool clothes for summer gigs - the wearer of this costume has to wear a large, padded winter coat to cover up the lines of the pipe.

The puppet's internal structure is made from PVC pipes and some form of flexible plastic bracing. This cuts out the need to have foam over the PVC structure but you can see in the photo of the finished puppet that the body lacks a pleasing structure, as the fabric has dipped slightly between the bars. It isn't too noticeable with such a long fur but it'd be distracting on any structure covered with a thinner material. Because of this, my PVC structure will be covered with a foam shell which is smooth and round without any dips or lines. Whilst using a cage structure instead of a foam shell would have less weight, I don't feel like it's a worthwhile compromise when the structure would be visible under the fur.