Final Sugar Monster Design

Here is the final Sugar Monster puppet design. The finished puppet is pink with lavender accents, not the the brown pictured here.

Hershey's Kiss

For some of the puppet designs I incorporated elements reminiscent of familiar candy and junk food. Notice that this Sugar Monster is shaped like an elongated Hershey's Kiss, with a big curl at the top of the head. I based the color on cotton candy.

Female Sugar Monster

I always imagined the Sugar Monster as a female character. In this puppet design I tried playing up the traditional female design characteristics, giving her full lips and large eyelashes. I also experimented with the horns, making them wavy and dragon-like.

Cute And Cuddly

In this Sugar Monster puppet design my goal was to create a character that was cute and cuddly, but obviously wired. I thought it would be funny if the Sugar Monster was short and bouncy with a long tail.

Striped Candy Horns

The client found Sugar Monster No. 1 the most appealing because of the cotton candy-like body and the striped candy horns. Using this illustration as a starting point, I developed a bunch of variations, playing with the shape of the nose, the color, and the scale of the body.

Sugar Monster Choices

Here is a group of Sugar Monsters that I assembled for the client. When designing a puppet for someone else, it’s important to present them with a wide range of choices to help focus their vision of the character. These illustrations served as a starting point for the design process of the Sugar Monster.

Jeff's Monsters

Along with the rabbit family, Aventuras Saludables also features three wacky monsters: Captain Candy, Slugzilla and Quickie. Before the monsters had names, they were referred to as The Sugar Monster, The Lazy Monster and The Fast Food Monster. Here is an initial sketch of the monsters done by talented character designer and story artist Jeff Pidgeon. Jeff has had an incredible career in the field of animation, and we were honored that he contributed to the creative development of this puppet show.

Rabbit Puppets!

The rabbit family is complete, with eyes, ears, noses and teeth. The costumes were made by Bethan Land, whose credits include Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Seabiscuit and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Pablito's Face

Pablito’s face nears completion. The fur on the bridge of his nose was carefully trimmed to create a graduated look.

Flowbee

Once the foam build was complete, the rabbit puppets were covered in high-quality store-bought fur. The fur would eventually be trimmed down with a Flowbee. The hands were covered in Antron fleece that was dyed to match the color of the body.

Trimming Foam

Here B.J. trims some foam away from the mother rabbit’s head.

Toupee Tape

B.J. pinned and taped Pablito’s facial features in place to see if their size and position looked good before they were permanently attached. In this photo Pablito’s teeth are made out of a dense foam called L-200; they are temporarily pinned in place. The finished teeth were made out of sanded styrene, a hard plastic. Pablito’s nose is held in place with toupee tape.

Scott Foam

Anita’s head was made out of a sheet of Scott Foam using a custom-made pattern. Pablito's head and Mom’s head were carved out of a solid block of Scott Foam. Dad’s head combines both techniques, with a patterned head and carved muzzle.

Building Rabbits

B.J. Guyer - along with puppet builder Dave Fedele, whose credits include Where the Wild Things Are, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Disney’s Country Bears - were responsible for constructing the rabbit family. They did an excellent job interpreting the designs to create a group of beautiful puppets.

Here B.J. adjusts the mother rabbit’s mouth palate.

B.J. Guyer

Once the rabbit family designs were approved, it was time to start building. In the past my brother Sean and I have built all the puppets for Swazzle’s shows; because of our tight schedule we enlisted the help of skilled puppet builder B.J. Guyer of Puppetown Productions. B.J.’s credits include The Muppets Wizard of Oz, Crank Yankers and Team America: World Police.

Anita

Anita is the youngest member of the rabbit family and the star of her soccer team. She’s an athletic girl who can be enticed into playing video games when she should be practicing. I drew Anita with a slanted forehead for an aerodynamic look.

Pablito

Pablito is the main character of Aventuras Saludables. He is an imaginative boy who sees himself as the super hero Super Pablito. To make Pablito look bright-eyed and attentive, I gave him wide oval eyes and a tall forehead.

Mother Rabbit

I wanted the mother rabbit to contrast visually with the father, so I made her long and tall. In the puppet show she has a lot of schedules to juggle, and she barely has time to make dinner for the family.

Father Rabbit

After all the puppet designs were done, it was decided that the Aventuras Saludables family would be rabbits. The father is the biggest and roundest of the characters. In the puppet show he is a very busy guy who is in desperate need of an energy boost.

Animals

One idea about the puppet family was to make them animals. Animals are universal - they don’t reflect any specific ethnic group or skin color, so audience members can imagine themselves in the role.

People

At one point I experimented with the idea of making the puppet family into realistic-looking people. In order to create a cohesive look, I played with opposite color schemes. Dad and Anita are the same color, and Mom and Pablito are the same color. Dad’s face and Anita’s face are the same color as Mom’s nose and Pablito’s nose, whereas Mom’s face and Pablito’s face are the same color as Dad’s nose and Anita’s nose.

Color Tests

Sometimes it’s helpful to make a bold change in order to come up with a different take on a character. Here are some tests where I duplicated the family and adjusted the colors.

Monsters

While designing the family, I experimented with several different concepts, like drawing them as monsters. This idea was abandoned because we wanted the monsters that visit the family to feel unique.

Copy And Tweak

Many of these early puppet designs were done very quickly so that I could give the client several different choices. Sometimes, in the interest of time, I’d take a puppet design, copy it, and then tweak it in Photoshop to create a variation. In this drawing I muted the color and removed the characters’ noses.

Muppet Flavor

One of the initial ideas was to give the family puppets a “Muppet” look. I did my best to capture the flavor of the Muppets without ripping them off. This proved to be challenging: The minute you draw a red guy with a purple nose, he looks like a Muppet.

The Family

Aventuras Saludables, written by Dylan Campbell and based on a story by Anita Coulte, is about a family whose house is invaded by three monsters that represent obstacles to healthy living. One of my responsibilities was to design the puppets. Here is an early design I did for the family: Mom, Dad, Anita and Pablito.

Aventuras Saludables

A few months ago Swazzle was contracted by Ethnic Marketing Group to develop a bilingual puppet show for Blue Cross as part of their Nuestro Bien outreach program. The puppet show Aventuras Saludables, which would be performed at health fairs, festivals and conventions, would use comedy and music to teach family audiences how to make healthy choices.

We had about two months to write, build and rehearse this new show during our busy summer season. Over the next few weeks I’m going discuss the development of Aventuras Saludables with a special emphasis on character design.