The Magical Moonshine Theatre

The Papier Mache crew goes to work on the arms and head.  Wallace (above) and Michael (left) add the SF Chronicle and Vallejo Times Herald to the lady (no NY Times here!)  It looks like my carved foam with its paper skin will work!
Meanwhile I work on the hands...always hard.

Papier Mache parts, hung out in the wind to dry.  Shown here:  an arm part and the spikes for the helmet!  The plan is to velcro on the spikes so if they happen to hit something they will velcro off rather than tear or break off...a safety release, as it were.  The work continues tomorrow!

June 18 I spent carving the upper and lower arms.  The material is Styrofoam, rescued from furniture store packing crates, and the tools are band saw, electric carving knive (shown here) and sandpaper. 

Update on the giant Lady Liberty that will appear in the 2010 Vallejo July 4 parade, along with the giants from previous years.  
The head has been sculpted by Michael in clay.  Figure 1 below shows the wood, wire and styrafoam armature for the head modeling.  Photos of the original were used to sculpt the head in water based clay (figure 2.)  (Scroll down the blog to an earlier entry for a scale drawing showing the size and scale of the finished puppet.)

The actual liberty statue has a stern expression, captured here in clay.  She takes "liberty" very seriously!

After the head was modeled, it was cast in traditional plaster of paris, and the resulting mold was used to make the positive in thermo-plastic mesh.  Parts of the thermo plastic (the skin) are shown here with a layer of papier mache, which will later be painted.  The hair portions will be left as the visible mesh, to give it a hair like texture.  Thanks to Valerie and Jessie Horack for the first papier mache work on June 17!

For the arms, I am trying a refinement of my giant arms from previous years.  In General Vallejo (2007) and Benicia (2008), the arms were made of scavenged styrafoam (from furniture store packing.)  They were roughly carved and reinforced with a bamboo rod through them, making them strong and very light.  In both the Vallejos' cases, the arms were covered, so they only had to be roughly arm shaped.  With the lady Liberty I am going to try to create a more refined arm shape in styrafoam, and then papier mache the arms where the skin is visible.  Shown is arm number one, the experimental arm, to see how this technique might work.  So far it looks promising.

The new, giant Mare joins General Vallejo and Benicia Vallejo in the July 4th parade.