I want Jess to have a moveable jaw, eyes and hair, so I am creating her head seperately to her body and will attach this later with K and S. The initial idea for her head armature is quite simple as it is similar to the heads I have made in previous projects, however I am unsure of how how I will attach her hair to the skull. This is an initial design to get the old cogs in my head working. I've decided as this project is going to be experimental in it being the first time I have made a puppet like this and because I don't need to follow any strict designs, I will create her head first before designing the size of the body armature so that the body doesn't end up restricting what I want to do with the puppet as a whole.

I've started to prepare to make Jess' armature. These are obviously nowhere near the final designs but an initial look into what a Chinese Crested's skeleton looks like. I haven't made a four legged puppet before so this is quite an experiment for me!

She's now got her slap on and is ready to hit the town!.. Or more likely curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea if I know Jess at all!

I wanted to make a 3D version of my Jessica character in clay. I have decided that I will be making a stop-motion puppet of her so I firstly need to get my ideas off of the paper and into a 3D form.

Here's how it's going so far:

I created a wire structure that would support the clay, especially the wispy bits of hair above her eyes and around the mouth. I then started to build directly on top of this with the clay.

I started to mould shape into her face before adding hair onto the wire strands.

I've left the clay to dry before I can continue working on it...

Meet Jessica, the Chinese Crested with attitude. She shares a little cottage with my Grandmother Judith and her rather hairier powderpuff doggy friend Jasmine. She exudes so much character that I felt I just had to make a stop-motion character based on her!

Here are a few doodles of my hairless friend: