I did some more drawings for one of the 'Junk and refuse' characters I have been developing recently.

The idea of this guy is that he hides by collapsing his head into his body. I like the idea of having his legs collapse into his body as well, but I think this might be a little over complex to achieve. I thought instead it might be better for him to have very long thin legs instead, so when he collapses his head and folds his arms he looks like a water tower or a strange tree. Avoiding collapsible legs would allow me space in the body cavity to build a breathing mechanism, so he can breathe heavily when he is 'hiding'. In the top right corner of the above image there's a sketch of how this might work. I made a little test breathing mechanism:

It worked reasonably well, i think the foam needs to be more domed so the movement is more obvious. One of the things I need to work hard on is an array of different breathing mechanisms for puppets. I went to a wonderful workshop at the Bristol Festival of Puppetry run by Tom Morris and Tobi Olie (who were both heavily involved with Handspring Puppet Company's 'War Horse'). They emphasized the importance of breath in puppetry performance, both as a subtle movement picked up subconsciously by the audience and as an anchor for helping the coordination of the puppeteers. Later in the festival I had some of my part finished puppets tested out by Bee Daws and Kellie Rickell of Effigy, who suggested I work on some breathing mechanisms. Ive had a few other ideas for ways of doing this that I will perhaps do a post on later.

While I was doing the foam breathing mechanism I also made this blinking eye:

I intended to develop this for the extending puppet so he could have heavy looking, slow blinking eyes, but i worry about how easily it would read and ay opt for eyes that light up instead. This would fit well with the idea of him being some kind of robot.

This is the stage he is at at the moment:

He's been like this for a couple of weeks, I aught to settle on some design decisions soon.