Ball & Socket Stop-Motion Raccoon Puppet!

Here's a 1:1 (life-size) scale Raccoon stop-mo puppet for a segment of Writer/Animator/Graphic Artist Kurt Firla's multi-media Nuit Blanche 2011 project.
The people who helped put this guy together were awesome and generous enough to donate their time to a great project.
I'll let you wonder about that...I'll just say you should make your way to the intersection of Bay & Dundas West on the night of Saturday, October 1, 2011 and be transported to an alternate universe, the bottom of the Toronto harbor, outer space and to a mutant Raccoon paddock on the Island.

Stainless steel Ball & Socket armature for the limbs, neck and jaw with aluminum hip and shoulder blocks and aluminum wire for the spine and tail.
I pretty much just looked at the skeletal structure of a real Raccoon and made an approximation of the major areas of articulation.






The skull is steel plate with the basic form carved from SignFoam under a layer of sculpted Apoxie Sculpt for the detail.






Here it is with some paint and aluminum wires for some basic facial articulation.
The body was filled out with regular old upholstery foam.
Also a swatch of the fun fur.





...and the final product.
Fun-Fur application by Bonni Burns.
Wire, Latex and Cold-Foam hands by Brenda Baumgarten.
Ready to eat your garbage!