A couple of lovely friends, Parki and Kim, spent their Saturday morning helping me out with various  film-related things.  Their Saturday morning!  They arrived bright and early, fueled by lots of coffee, the crisp fall air,  and the desire to make miniature things.  Kim helped with a task I had originally thought of as tedious, but that’s now being called meticulous.  I think that sounds much better.

She helped me out by making all these tiny fingers for Sabela.   These are electrical wires casings, gutted of their fine wires and replaced with jewelry wire.  Tiny glass seed beads act as joints.

Parki wired up and spraypainted these spotlights.  They’ll have tiny functioning incandescent lightbulbs in them, and he’ll eventually attach them all to a dimmer so they can be animated.

The spotlights themselves are made of metal bottlecaps, wood, and some heavy card for the barn doors.

Here are Sabela’s backup legs, unpainted, with magnetic feet, standing on a pretty metal box.

And here are the tasks I’m facing right now.  I thought I’d put it together in a chart so I can keep track of the progress.  It seems a little daunting at the moment.

I’m using the same molds for the legs and head of Abigail, who’s Sabela’s little sister.  They should look a bit alike, anyway.  Liberdade is the Mom (she now has a name!), and Xosé Luís is the Dad.

I’m making backup parts for all the puppets.  Hopefully this will be enough; if not, I guess I can make more while shooting, though that’s obviously not ideal.

The main character is going to (of course) be featured the most, and is going to be moving around more than anyone else.  She’s the only character who will be walking, so I figured she’d need lots of extra backup legs for sure.  I think she’ll be in the film for about 1.5 minutes, at most…  The other characters will be on for about 45 seconds.  The 3 “side” characters are all sitting, and mostly moving their upper bodies.

I wonder if this is going to be enough backup parts?…