Bat puppets – completed!

13Oct08

Polly, a fruit bat, pollinating a flower with her long tongue. It is thanks to bats that we can enjoy such fruits as our beloved durians.

Sometime in between the hustle and bustle of packing, I managed to finish the bat shadow puppets for Cicada Tree’s Make a Difference for wildlife lessons.

The main problems faced were that a) the original set of puppets were drawn on heat-sensitive OHP plastic, which meant that they yellowed very quickly and b) a severe limitation of permanent marker colours.

I ended up taking them to the Beauty World Centre to have a new set photocopied onto heat-resistant plactic. Also, the colours on some of the puppets were done with highlighters and non-permanent markers, and fixed (to a limited extent?) with blasts from a hair dryer after colouring.

More pictures of the finished stick puppets:

Nur, the main character. One of her arms is movable, being jointed at the shoulder. Vilma said that the style looks ‘like a cross between wayang kulit and manga’, which is encouraging, as that is the visual effect I had been trying to achieve.

Fruity the flying fox (a large fruit-eating bat), with baby.

You can see the complete set of bat and human puppets here.

Filed under: All   |  Leave a Comment