The Head armature..

Without a doubt, the most tricky, precise and difficult I have come across in this project, but today, I think I finally made a decent one. (After 5 attempts it was about time) . I must say it took me all day, with a little frustrational break, so I hope it works when the moment comes on Friday. Here are the pieces I had to fit very precisely into the 3 cm head.

And here is the ugly result ...finished but not dried, so I'll cut off all the remaining wire tomorrow:

Before deciding what wire to use and where to put it, I made some test with the first foam latex head that had the armature in the slightly wrong place:

I found a couple of things, first of all, the cheek bones don't really give any extra expression to the character, so there is no need to waste space with them. The upper lip is to thin to place wire in it, so I fixed that in yesterday's mould. Also, I have an upper and lower lip, but if I want him to smile, there is nowhere to pull from, so I've put to wires in the sides of the mouth for this purpose. The eyebrows worked pretty well, but I am making a slight adjustment: in stead of one wire for both eyebrows, I've given each eyebrow it's independent wire. 

 I want a completely functional puppet this Friday, so I need to have everything ready by tomorrow night. Until then !!