Pee-wee’s flowers, all ready for their first performance!
Pee-wee Herman’s Flowers
At Swazzle Puppet Studio, I was charged with building the famous flowers for The Pee-wee Herman Show! While the 1980’s TV versions were hand puppets performed from behind, in this updated stage version they needed to be mechanical puppets performed from underneath. In addition, since some of the audience members could be quite a distance from the stage, these flowers needed to be more than twice the size! To learn more, check out the behind-the-scenes photos below, and consider contacting me to help bring your puppet project to life!
Cutting the leafs out of reticulated foam to create the half spheres.
The finished half-spheres with the mouths cut out.
Adding the flower’s soft foam petals .
Installing the mechanisms that will allow their mouths to articulate.
Attaching the head to the wooden dowel which will act as it’s stem.
Installing and trimming the red ultra-suede mouth palette.
Figuring out the pvc pipe structure that will hold the flowers as well as contain the monofilament strings which operate the mouths..
Stitching and covering the puppet with antron fleece.
One of the finished covered heads.
The finished puppets waiting to be installed into the set.
Ghost of Sham-Wow illustration designed by Patrick Johnson.
The Ghost of Sham-Wow
At Swazzle Puppet Studio, I was assigned to build a brand new character for The Pee-wee Herman Show! Based off of the infamous Sham-Wow infomercials, the Ghost of Sham-Wow is what happens when one of our favorite orange washcloths falls into a deep fryer! To learn more, check out the behind-the-scenes photos below, and consider contacting me to help bring your puppet project to life!
The finished puppet hanging from the stage’s catwalk. Ghost of Sham-Wow was made of white L200 foam covered with flowing translucent material to give an ethereal effect.
He’s even spookier in the dark!
The view from the stage.
Puppeteer, Carl Rudy, performed the ghost puppet like a marionette, from the catwalk up above.