Unfortunately, the battery on my camera died so I don’t have very many pictures of this part of the process.
I first removed the lower jaw and then carved out an upper and lower palate for the bear. While I’ll fiberglass all of it, I’ll wind up cutting some away later giving the bear a hard and a soft palate. This will make the performer more comfortable, by allowing more air to flow through and also avoiding hard poky bits of fiberglass. I put the jaw back on for the photo so you can see how our bear will look with his mouth open. Isn’t that a nice smile?
In the profile, you can also see that I’ve removed his nose. I’ll be making the nose out of leather so it’s nicer to touch. I’m also planning on cutting part of the snout off and replacing it with foam, to make the nose friendlier. I’m expecting the bear to do a lot of hugging at the children’s hospital. If the performer misjudges the distance in a hug, which can happen when your nose is suddenly ten centimeters longer than it has been, then the softer nose will cushion any bumps. Besides, kids will like to squeeze it. I don’t know why but they always seem to do that with puppets.
Hey. I wonder what would happen if we put a squeaker in the nose. Hm… I might have to look into that, it could be very cute.
After this, everything gets vaselined and goes under fiberglass.
