Tails Doll Puppet/Plush
A bit off the beaten path for me; here's a puppet! (and a plush copy of it without the puppeteering controls.)
This Tails Doll marionette has been in my mind for a little while; I'd never done a puppet of any kind before but I love the character and it looked like a match made in heaven! I'd been looking for a more compact Sonic The Hedgehog project to bring to conventions after Otakuthon 2025, and then realized this would be the perfect way to bring another fun interactive performance to events!
I patterned Tails Doll by building up the head, body, tails and shoes out of newspaper and tape to build up a 3D shape, pulled a flat pattern out from it, and flat patterned the simpler parts like the ears and limbs. After testing the pattern using scrap fabric, I made Tails Doll using fleece, hard felt (for the soles), a zipper, embroidery floss, a spring, scrap plastic sheet and adhesive car vinyl. The first version's neck was kept super thin to give it a large range of motion for puppeteering, while the second Tails Doll was given a proper neck on the pattern that was more suitable for a plush-only variant.
I'm very proud of the pattern; it looks super accurate, and I got to try a lot of interesting techniques to troubleshoot. For instance, car vinyl was used on the gem to avoid having to paint it, which made it ultra shiny and smooth. The spring gives the antenna a lot of motion, and the shoes have hard felt inside to keep the soles straight (and a little pebble in each shoe to help weight them down enough to help him stand straight when being puppeteered.)
This was my first time making a marionette, so my process was a little improvised. I followed ressources online (mainly Puppets by Arlee) to pick out the airplane shape and the right kind of wires (deep-sea fishing wire; it's damn near indestructible just trying to cut it for use!). I followed tips as well for the wires connected to the head and body; since Tails Doll is supposed to be floating, I skipped rigging the legs to instead and added extra controls for the two tails to wiggle. The arms are connected by a singular wire going through the controller; I added some nails to the controller so I could hook the wire closer to my thumb to control them, but also allow them to hang limply from his sides if I needed by un-hooking it back to the front.
All in all, it was a fun project! I have a cute little puppet that can wiggle and dance and entertain people at events where I don't want to (or cannot) wear a big costume. I have a plush version that hangs out on my guest chair now, and I can easily swap to this one at an event to hold if I need to! It's pretty cool to finally have a physical version of my childhood's horrible creepypasta nightmare.
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