{"id":9418,"date":"2020-06-15T18:25:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T18:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/?page_id=9418"},"modified":"2021-04-01T06:09:11","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T13:09:11","slug":"oscar-the-grouch-project","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/oscar-the-grouch-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar the Grouch Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though Oscar has always been one of my favorite Muppet characters (I like him for the same reason I like Tony Clifton \u2013 he\u2019s rather charmingly abrasive) the thought didn\u2019t occur to actually build one until I won a tour of the Henson Creature Shop in a charity auction late 2016.<\/p>\n

I was able to take one other person along on the tour, and of my friends who I knew would enjoy it the most was my pal Paul Dini.\u00a0 Like me he\u2019s been a lifelong Muppet fan, and his Muppet fandom no doubt inspired him to get into the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n

In the conference room of the Henson Creature Shop was an actual Oscar the Grouch – on display in his signature trash can.\u00a0 Paul and I immediately became 8 years old again!\u00a0 I thought a display just like that would look great in Planet Wallywood, but it would be very difficult to create.<\/p>\n

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Oh sure I had built an Oscar back in the early 80\u2019s (along with about 22 other puppets) but it wasn\u2019t very good.\u00a0 It sufficed for the little puppet shows I was doing around the Sioux Falls, South Dakota area (I even had a trash can fabricated that I could get inside to operate him) but it was far from a 1:1 exact replica for the discerning taste of the adult Muppet fan I had become.<\/p>\n

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I already had commissioned exact 1:1 Muppet replicas of Kermit the Frog, Gonzo and Animal from a professional fabricator, and I liked how they looked displayed in my house.\u00a0 I have a dedicated Puppet Room in Planet Wallywood, which features all sorts of puppets and puppet-related toys on display.\u00a0 I asked the fabricator if he could build an Oscar for me, but he was very busy and the delivery time was in the distant future.\u00a0 So I started fooling around with the idea of dusting off the old puppet-building skills and creating one myself.<\/p>\n

Right around that time I commissioned a Mahna Mahna replica from a puppet fabricator in New York.\u00a0 As I began the search to source the necessary materials, I came across a mossy-green faux alpaca fur for his vest.\u00a0 When it arrived I realized that it would make excellent Oscar fur.\u00a0 My Oscar obsession was back on!<\/p>\n

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Unlike the days of puppet building when I was 19, I had a wealth of resource materials available through the internet.\u00a0 Back in the early 80\u2019s all I had to work with were photos in books, posters and calendars.\u00a0 I noticed that there had been several generations of Oscars throughout the years since his creation in 1969.\u00a0 But I settled on the Oscar that I knew from childhood.\u00a0 Unlike the Oscar of today, who\u2019s bright green and clean, I wanted the ratty, filthy, matted dull green Oscar from the early 70\u2019s.<\/p>\n

From eyeballing several photos of a real Oscar, I determined what I felt were the proper sizes for his head.\u00a0 I had seen many photos of Oscar being held by the legendary Carroll Spinney, and when I compared Oscar\u2019s head to Carroll\u2019s, I realized that Oscar was approximately 1.5 \u201cCarroll heads\u201d in width.\u00a0 So if the average human head was 6\u201d across, and Oscar was that plus a half, I figured his width was most likely 9\u201d across.\u00a0 (Some time later, secret Henson intel that I acquired through one of my industry operatives confirmed that to be the case!)<\/p>\n

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I built a test Oscar head out of poster board and covered it with some of the green fur \u2013 just to see how the sizing parameters looked in a three dimensional format. Then I ordered some more faux alpaca fur in brown for possible eyebrow material.\u00a0 And when it arrived I got a bit sidetracked.\u00a0 I realized the fur would make an excellent Rowlf!<\/p>\n

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Since the \u201cfrown\u201d mechanism of Oscar\u2019s unibrow was somewhat above my skill level at that point, I decided to dive back into puppet building with a simpler project. Rowlf seemed like the perfect project to start with.\u00a0 He had a simple design, I\u2019ve always loved the character, and my first dog was named after him back in the 60\u2019s!\u00a0 While I started in on Rowlf I kept at the puppet fabricator I knew to try and find time to make an Oscar for me.<\/p>\n

He sent me pictures of an Oscar that was made by a fabricator he knew, but it looked a little too \u201coff-model\u201d for my tastes. I was hoping for something a little more exact.\u00a0 I figured I wasn\u2019t going to get what I wanted unless I did it myself.<\/p>\n

In the meantime I kept working on Rowlf, and got him completed in time to unveil him at the 2019 WonderCon in Anaheim. The reactions I got inspired me to get moving on completing my Oscar.\u00a0 So I took what I had learned so far about how Oscar\u2019s \u201cfrown mech\u201d worked, and built a prototype out of vaccuformed plastic eyes, foam rubber, armature wire, and foam core.\u00a0 The basic principles were all there.<\/p>\n

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I purchased several 3\u201d and 3.5\u201d acrylic domes at a craft store.\u00a0 The acrylic pieces themselves wouldn\u2019t be very good for eye pieces because of the tiny \u201cnipple\u201d on the top from where the acrylic material was injected. But I could make suitable vaccuform \u201cbucks\u201d from those pieces.<\/p>\n

A \u201cbuck\u201d for the vaccuform process is a rigid piece (often made from a plaster-like substance called Hydrocal) that the plastic will be molded around.\u00a0 The buck is placed on a ventilated platform with industrial-strength suction underneath it.\u00a0 Above it is a large heating element with a frame, between which a large sheet of styrene plastic is fastened.\u00a0 The heating element heats up the plastic making it very pliable and soft, and at the right moment the frame is lowered over the ventilated platform, the suction is turned on, and it sucks the warm plastic around the contours of the buck; making a perfect, hollow plastic replica of the buck. When the plastic cools, the buck is removed and the sheet of styrene is cut to size.<\/p>\n

I coated the insides of the acrylic domes with Vaseline (for a mold release) and poured in Hydrocal.\u00a0 Once they hardened I removed them from the acrylic domes and had my bucks.\u00a0 The 3\u201d domes would be used for Oscar\u2019s eyeballs, and the 3.5\u201d domes would be used for his eyelid pieces.\u00a0 I needed a slightly larger piece for the eyelids so when they moved over the eyeballs they had plenty of room to move without touching the eyeball pieces.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid my dad was doing some work around the house using \u201ctoggle bolts\u201d (also known as Molly bolts.)\u00a0 They allow you to hang stuff on a wall when there\u2019s no stud behind the drywall to support it.\u00a0 The toggle bolt is a little spring-loaded V-shaped metal piece that compresses so you can get it through the hole in the wall. Then once it\u2019s through the drywall the spring mechanism makes it spread out so it anchors into the wall.\u00a0 I always thought those little devices would be good for blinking puppet eyebrows.\u00a0 So I set about designing a toggle bolt mechanism to operate Oscar\u2019s unibrow.<\/p>\n

I even consulted a special effects house to assist me in making a suitable frown mechanism based on my original prototype, and I took them my first Oscar head.\u00a0 But what I got in return was much too high tech to work.\u00a0 It would have been great for an animatronic, but it wasn\u2019t conducive for operation by a human hand.<\/p>\n

So I went back to the drawing board and designed a toggle bolt mechanism for my middle finger that would bolt into the upper mouth plate, and have wires running through it which would operate the eyelid pieces through the back.<\/p>\n

My Christmas 2019 project was building a second Oscar head.\u00a0 Again, I cut the mouth plates out of ABS plastic, and started attaching the foam rubber to the mouth plates; one for the head, and one for the lower jaw.\u00a0 I bolted in the mechanism I built and added leather finger loops.\u00a0 But it still wasn\u2019t giving me the fluid movement I needed.<\/p>\n

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I just wasn\u2019t able to wrap my head around how exactly it would work.\u00a0 My fatal error was not thinking like 1969.\u00a0 What was the simplest way they would have done it 50 years ago?\u00a0 Though I had what I thought was a clever gizmo, it ended up being overkill for what I needed.<\/p>\n

Then I remembered what a puppeteer in New York once told me.\u00a0 He said that Carroll Spinney once told him that when Oscar frowned, he (Carroll) was actually flipping off the world.\u00a0 And nobody knew it.\u00a0 That told me that the middle finger that operated Oscar\u2019s frown went up, when Oscar\u2019s unibrow went down.\u00a0 I spent a lot of hours in bed thinking about it and then it hit me!<\/p>\n

Like I had on my original prototype, it was probably just a simple ring mechanism in between the two eyes that operated the unibrow.\u00a0 I knew that Big Bird\u2019s eyelids were operated by a ring mechanism, so I started building a new mouth plate to start on a third head.<\/p>\n

I removed the toggle mechanism from the second head so I could do some more experimentation.\u00a0 But the third head was going to be the charm!\u00a0 I cut a piece of 1\u201d thick foam rubber to size.\u00a0 Then I \u201cbeveled\u201d the edge.\u00a0 Beveling is when you give the edge of the foam a slant.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to cut precisely, but I had to use a long blade to do it.\u00a0 My Exacto knife was too short.\u00a0 I bought some blades that are traditionally used in box cutters, because they\u2019re about 5\u201d long; perfect for sawing through thick foam.<\/p>\n

The beveled edge of the foam is Barge glued on to the mouth plate so the angle of the foam leans outward.\u00a0 After it dries, wedged sections are cut out of the foam to give you the backward angle you need for the slant of Oscar\u2019s face.\u00a0 And when the beveled foam is pulled back, it gives the puppet a nice little \u201ctop lip.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s the type of contoured upper lip you see on Muppets like Fozzie and Scooter.<\/p>\n

I cut the bottom mouth plate out of ABS plastic, and unlike Rowlf and Kermit who have solid lower mouth plates, Muppets like Oscar and Animal have \u201cC\u201d shaped mouth plates.\u00a0 The center of the mouth plate is open because they have three dimensional, sculpted-foam tongues.\u00a0 The soft lower plate allows the tongue to \u201csink\u201d back into the puppet\u2019s lower palette when the mouth is closed.\u00a0 Other Muppets like Kermit and Fozzie have flat tongues cut out of felt.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Animal, his unibrow mechanism is different than Oscar\u2019s.\u00a0 Animal\u2019s unibrow is one wire that extends out over both eyeballs, so the unibrow lifts and lowers equally.\u00a0 But because of the angle that Oscar\u2019s eyes are set, each eyeball has their own individual wire system.\u00a0 (More on that later)<\/p>\n

I picked two eyeball pieces that I liked and gave them a good sanding with 600 sandpaper.\u00a0 I noticed that Oscar\u2019s eyes have flecks of gray and beige on them.\u00a0 This is done to take down the vibrancy of the white styrene plastic, since it wouldn\u2019t look right for Oscar to have bright, white, cheery eyes.\u00a0 Sanding them with fine sandpaper made sure the paint would \u201cbite\u201d into the plastic.<\/p>\n

First I painted the eyeball pieces with a whitish-grey.\u00a0 My effects guy Jim Ojala taught me the technique of \u201cflicking\u201d paint.\u00a0 This is done when you need to color a piece with fine flecks of different colors to give it dimensionality.\u00a0 I put the eyeballs on the ground, dipped an old toothbrush in some diluted acrylic paint, and ran my finger over the brush\u2019s bristles.\u00a0 This sent tiny drops of paint raining down on to the eyeballs.\u00a0 First I did gray, and then I did some in beige.\u00a0 When I achieved the look I was after, I let it dry.\u00a0 I coated the entire eyeballs with a matte-finish sealer.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s important to paint the eyeballs BEFORE they\u2019re put into the puppet head, because painting them afterwards would be a real pain.<\/p>\n

Once I determined the spacing of the eyes on the face, I drew in the measurements on the foam and prepared to cut the holes for the eyeball pieces.\u00a0 Since foam stretches pretty well, I cut the holes slightly smaller than the dimensions of the eye pieces to give them a snug fit once they\u2019re placed.<\/p>\n

While still on the buck, I took the pieces for the eyelids and attached 3\/16\u201d armature wire to them.\u00a0 I bent the wire over the curve of the piece, and ran the wire down the sides, leaving about 5\u201d on either side.\u00a0 This would give me plenty to work with later when they\u2019re installed into the puppet. Since armature wire is difficult to glue to plastic, I took thin pieces of leather and glued them snugly around the wire on either side and attached it to the eyelid pieces. This would ensure the wires on the eyelid pieces wouldn\u2019t move around. After the glue dried, I trimmed the eyelid pieces to the dimensions I needed them.\u00a0 I only needed enough to glue the green fur to on the top, and the brown fur to on the bottom.<\/p>\n

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In the sides of the eyeball pieces, I drilled small holes just big enough to accommodate the 3\/16\u201d armature wire.\u00a0 Then I threaded the excess wire on the eyelid pieces through those holes, and I had floating eyelid pieces over the eye pieces.\u00a0 Once the wire was through the eyepieces, I bent them at an angle to give me little \u201cpull tabs\u201d to operate the eyelids.\u00a0 Pushing the wire down opened the eyelids wide, and raising the wire up pushed the eyelids pieces down. Because of the way the eyelid pieces \u201ctravels\u201d over the surface of the eyeball piece, it really only moves over 1\/3 of the eyeball.\u00a0 But you don\u2019t need any more movement than that.<\/p>\n

Once the blinking eyelid and eyeball pieces are set, it\u2019s time to put them into the foam face.\u00a0 But since the eyeballs have been painted, the actual surface of the eye can NOT come in contact with any Barge glue.\u00a0 There\u2019s a component in Barge glue that will eat paint so you have to keep the glue away from any painted surface at all costs!<\/p>\n

Instead, I had purchased some thin foam-like strips at Foam Mart that I would use to secure the eyeballs into place through the back. I call it \u201cfoam tape,\u201d for lack of a better term.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s made from something called L200, or neoprene, or what.\u00a0 But it works great.\u00a0 One side is smooth, and the other side is textured.\u00a0 I glued pieces into the inside edges of the eyeballs with plenty of tape left over to secure into the foam head.<\/p>\n

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I cut the eyeholes in the foam, set the eye pieces into the head at the angle I liked, and secured them with stick pins.\u00a0 I glued the \u201cfoam tape\u201d pieces to the foam head and trimmed off the excess. Then I let it dry for a day.\u00a0 I now had two eyelid and eyeball pieces secured into the head and it was looking really great.\u00a0 When I manipulated the wire \u201cpull tabs\u201d in the back, the blinking mechanism was coming to life!<\/p>\n

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Where the wires from the eyelids overlapped behind the eyeball I joined them together with little leather strips and Barge glue, while still leaving about 3\u201d of wire for my \u201cpull tabs.\u201d\u00a0 I bent another piece of wire that went straight across about 2 inches, and then I bent it into a ring just big enough to fit my middle finger, and then bent it back out straight for another 2 inches.\u00a0 I bent the pull tabs in each eyeball toward the center of the puppet\u2019s head at 45 degree angles.\u00a0 I joined the angled pull tabs with the finger ring wire and glued them together with little leather strips and Barge glue.\u00a0 Now my ring mechanism would control the up and down movement of the eyelids.<\/p>\n

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I started building the rest of the head with pieces of 1\u201d thick foam rubber.\u00a0 Some puppets can take a smaller thickness of foam rubber, but because of Oscar\u2019s size, and needing stability to accommodate the constant movement and pull of the eyelids, I opted for a beefier thickness of foam.<\/p>\n

Since I was modeling mine after the \u201cvintage\u201d Oscar of the 70\u2019s, I found as many pictures of his profiles as I could find.\u00a0 But they were rare.\u00a0 I had to go on YouTube and look at Oscar videos and get screenshots when he would turn his head.\u00a0 Though the Oscar of today has a stubbier head in profile, I like the more sloped, tapered head Oscar had in the 70\u2019s.\u00a0 It took me quite a long time of sculpting, adding and subtracting foam pieces to get the right look.\u00a0 But it was worth it.\u00a0 I especially like how the shape of Oscar\u2019s head cuts back in at an angle at the base of his skull. That\u2019s true vintage Oscar.<\/p>\n

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The black fabric I used in the mouth is a non-light reflective fabric similar to that which is used by a film crew when they want to block out light.\u00a0 I glued the fabric to the mouth plate with plenty left over on the bottom for the lower jaw.\u00a0 When that was set I aligned the lower jaw to the rest of the head and attached the fabric to the \u201cC\u201d shaped piece of plastic for the bottom mouth plate.\u00a0 I had to be sure not to stretch the fabric too tightly across the mouth plate because I wanted to give it lots of room to \u201csink in\u201d once the tongue was added later.<\/p>\n

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Speaking of the tongue, I first made a pattern on paper that I liked.\u00a0 Then I traced it on to a piece of \u00bd\u201d thick foam rubber and cut it out.\u00a0 I started to sculpt the edges with a small pair of very sharp scissors, trying to round out all the angled edges of the foam.\u00a0 Sculpting foam is fun, but electro static will make the little pieces of foam that you\u2019re cutting away stick to the scissors.\u00a0 I remember this problem when I was sculpting foam as a kid, and I had to coat my scissors with a silicone spray.\u00a0 I bought some spray paint suitable for painting foam rubber and painted the tongue.<\/p>\n

I took the finished head to Alex at Alex in Wonderland in Burbank.\u00a0 They specialize in making all sorts of costumes and creatures for the film and television industry.\u00a0 And they\u2019re huge Muppet fans!\u00a0 Alex was going to design a covering for Oscar\u2019s head out of muslin.\u00a0 Once I approved it she would cut it out of the faux alpaca fur, stitch it together and hand it back.<\/p>\n

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The pattern she made was perfect and needed very little (if any) alterations.\u00a0 I picked up the fur covering and foam head and took him back home.\u00a0 This was just before the country started locking down because of the Covid-19 virus.\u00a0 So would have plenty of time to work on Oscar during the lockdown.<\/p>\n

She had pinned the fur into place on the foam head, so all it needed now was to be glued into place.\u00a0 Since the most important part of the head were the movable eyelids, I started on those first by trimming and gluing the edge of the fabric to the back half of the eyelid piece, just after the wire piece. I made sure I had lots of fabric so the eyelid piece could travel back and forth without restriction.<\/p>\n

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Then I precisely measured and trimmed the fabric that would go around the eye pieces.\u00a0 It\u2019s important not to leave too much, and really important not to cut off too much.\u00a0 The fabric has to butt up against the edge of the eyeball pieces exactly.\u00a0 I marked out the dimensions on the back of the fur and trimmed them gingerly; never cutting the front of the fur.\u00a0 (When cutting fake fur you should never cut from the front, only the back, which will prevent you from accidentally cutting off some of the length of the pile that you\u2019ll need later.)<\/p>\n

I applied some Barge glue to the foam around the eyes, and applied some Barge glue to the back of the fur.\u00a0 When both areas were tacky, I pressed the fabric into place under the eyes perfectly.\u00a0 Then I glued the rest of the fur to the front of the face.\u00a0 I also glued the fur to the lower jaw, the sides of the head, and the base of the skull.\u00a0 Alex told me to only glue the tension areas where there would be movement.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t need to glue the fur down to the top of the head at all because the fabric will just naturally lie there on its own.\u00a0 Because the pile of the fur is so long, I had to bobby pin the fur out of the way in most instances so it wouldn\u2019t accidentally get in the glued areas while it was being applied.<\/p>\n

On most Muppet\u2019s mouths there\u2019s an overlap of fabric that goes from the face fabric into the outer edge of the mouth\u2019s inside.\u00a0 On the back of the fabric I made very specific measurement marks, and trimmed the fabric to the size I wanted.\u00a0 I put glue on the inside edge of the mouth, as well as the fabric itself.\u00a0 When it started getting tacky I pressed the fabric down and let it set.<\/p>\n

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When faux fur is trimmed the edge of the fabric\u2019s weave is usually visible.\u00a0 This ruins the look of the puppet, so I referred back to a technique that I used to use all the time when I was making puppets as a kid.\u00a0 I put a thin line of glue just on the edge of the fabric with a toothpick.\u00a0 When the glue gets tacky I \u201cbend\u201d the fur over on to the glue and press it down.\u00a0 This helped to cover up the fabric\u2019s weave and make it undetectable.<\/p>\n

The original brown faux alpaca fur I bought for Oscar\u2019s unibrow (which I ended up using for my Rowlf puppet) wasn\u2019t reddish enough for Oscar\u2019s unibrow.\u00a0 Luckily I found some perfect fur on eBay from the U.K. which looked perfect.\u00a0 With the green fur glued perfectly into place on the head, I pinned some tracing paper over his eyes to create a pattern for his unibrow.<\/p>\n

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I transferred the pattern to the back of the reddish-brown fur, cut it out, and attached it to the edges of the eyelid pieces.\u00a0 I made sure to leave plenty of extra \u201cflex\u201d room in the middle between the eyes for when the unibrow moves up and down.\u00a0 I matted and compressed the fur to take down some of the bushiness of the pile.\u00a0 The unibrow will also benefit from some trimming, which will come toward the end of the process.<\/p>\n

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When I had the eyelid pieces made I requested that they be made in black plastic.\u00a0 But since the plastic would have had to have been special ordered, I told him to just make them out of white and I would paint them.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t do it early on, and I ended up regretting it.\u00a0 The insides of Oscar\u2019s eyelids were still white, and though I initially didn\u2019t think they\u2019d be that noticeable, I realized now that they are.<\/p>\n

I took one of the rejected plastic eyeball pieces that I had lying around and cut it to fit over Oscar\u2019s eyeballs.\u00a0 This would protect the painted eyeballs from any drippage that would occur as I painted the insides of the eyelids.\u00a0 I taped them into place with painter\u2019s tape, and even pinned them at the bottom so they wouldn\u2019t move as I was working.<\/p>\n

With a long, thin brush, I painted the insides of the eyelids as best as I could.\u00a0 While I had the plastic eyeball covers on, I also took the opportunity to glue down some of the edges of the eyebrow.\u00a0 Remember, if any Barge glue gets on the surface of the painted eyeballs it will melt the paint.<\/p>\n

I noticed on the original Oscar, the builders left his unibrow fur slightly longer in the areas where the wires are inserted into the eyeball pieces.\u00a0 This is to disguise the unibrow mechanism from the viewer\u2019s eye. Everything had fit together perfectly. The edge of the reddish-brown fur on the eyebrow was visible on the edge of the eyelid piece.\u00a0 So I mixed together some reddish-brown acrylic paint to match the color and painted the weave of the fabric so it blended in.<\/p>\n

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Since Alex\u2019s pattern only included Oscar\u2019s head and neck, I engaged the services of my regular seamstress Shelley to create the main body.\u00a0 Once she had the body finished I took the head to her for attachment.<\/p>\n

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I bought a new 31 gallon metal trash can which seemed to fit the size perspective of my puppet.\u00a0 Jim Ojala would bang it up, paint it and add rust.\u00a0 He\u2019d also put a hinge on the back so the lid opens wide to take Oscar out, but has a stopper on it so it never touches the puppet when it\u2019s in the can.<\/p>\n

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The hair wizard I\u2019ve known since 1993, and who has done the hair on all my lifesize figures, came over to do the delicate cutting on Oscar\u2019s face.\u00a0 Sergio Lopez is a master with scissors and has an eye for detail.\u00a0 The fur on Oscar\u2019s face below his eyes is trimmed very closely to properly display the characteristics of his face.\u00a0 On the sides it gradually blends back into the long, matted hair we all know and love.\u00a0 But one wrong move with the scissors and you\u2019d have an unfixable error on the puppet\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

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Sergio\u2019s technique is to do less to begin with, let me see it, and then cut a bit more.\u00a0 It\u2019s better than cutting too much to start, because then there\u2019s no turning back.\u00a0 Sergio cut the hair on Oscar\u2019s face in stages, and finally we agreed that the cut he gave him was the finishing touch.\u00a0 He also put a specific product on the fur to make it look matted.<\/p>\n

Then he turned his attention to Oscar\u2019s unibrow.\u00a0 The unibrow on some Oscars have been bushier than others, but since I\u2019m going with a more \u201cvintage\u201d Oscar look for mine, we wanted to minimize it a bit.\u00a0 Sergio did a nice job of trimming out parts of it, but leaving other parts long, and then putting on some product to matt it down.\u00a0 Once Oscar would get his body put on, I\u2019d trim the palms of his hands, because I didn\u2019t want to make Sergio come all the way to Hollywood again.<\/p>\n

But he taught me how to cut it properly.\u00a0 When trimming fur, you always trim IN to the fur, and not across.\u00a0 Hands I can handle, but when it comes to something as important as the face, I needed to call in the master!<\/p>\n

Jim Ojala brought over the distressed trash can and it looked marvelous.\u00a0 The hinge on the back is a pressure hinge, so it will stay open at any angle you please.\u00a0 Just squeeze in the center button and adjust it accordingly.\u00a0 The first day I put Oscar in the can, he looked completely at home!<\/p>\n

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My seamstress Shelley had been working on the body for a quite a while, as she wanted to get it just right.\u00a0 Unlike the body she did for Rowlf, she wanted to make sure to cut Oscar\u2019s body in such a way that he would look full and have contours when sitting in his can.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t want him to look like a sack of limp fur.<\/p>\n

When I picked him up his body looked a bit too large for his head, so I took him home, laid him out and made some decisions as to where some fabric needed to be taken out.\u00a0 I took him back to Shelley and within a few days he was back looking perfect!<\/p>\n

The same day I picked him up, my paint for the tongue arrived in the mail.\u00a0 I came home, painted the tongue and let it dry.\u00a0 Then I masked off all but the center line and painted over with a darker red.\u00a0 I put it aside to let it dry completely.<\/p>\n

I took a can of brown spray paint and sprayed portions of his fur to make him look dingy and grimy.\u00a0 Since I was going for the dirtier-looking Oscar from the past I sprayed him quite liberally.\u00a0 But because the can of paint was old, the nozzles kept clogging.\u00a0 So I found other nozzles I could use.\u00a0 But I got about 5 sprays out of them and they would clog again.\u00a0 Finally, when I deemed that I had sprayed him enough, I took paint thinner on a paper towel to his fur and make the painted areas look more like stain.\u00a0 It ended up looking quite good.<\/p>\n

When the dirtying up process was finished, I glued in the tongue permanently.\u00a0 I also cut some 1\u201d spheres out of black velvet and measured out the areas on the eyeball pieces where the pupils should sit.\u00a0\u00a0 The perfect position was for the edge of the pupil to be placed at \u00be of an inch from the inside of the eye, and \u00bd of an inch up from the bottom of the eye.\u00a0 I measured, then measured again, and masked off the area on the eyeball piece with safe painter\u2019s tape.\u00a0 I put Barge glue in the area between the tape, snipped out a small wedge on the black velvet pupils (so it would lay perfectly on the contour of the curved eyeball piece) and put Barge on the back of them.\u00a0 I allowed the glue to get tack, and then I gently applied the pupil to the eyeball piece.\u00a0 I flattened it out with my finger, made sure the area where the wedge had been removed joined up perfectly and seamlessly, and let it dry.<\/p>\n

I found a perfect pedestal for him to rest on temporarily, until Kyle at Plastic Depot could make the final support rod in Plexiglas. In order for him to have the perfect position in the trash can, and attain the perfect height in relation to the can, I determined that the total height of the support rod should be 36 inches.<\/p>\n

I placed him in his trash can and he looked right at home!\u00a0 Sergio Lopez stopped by one last time to trim the hair on Oscar\u2019s palms.\u00a0 Cutting faux fur like this can be a delicate issue, because if you cut too short you\u2019ll see the weave of the fabric underneath.\u00a0 But Sergio did his usual stellar job!<\/p>\n

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My pal Joe Pendleton fabricated a 15\u201d X 19\u201d X 19\u201d wood box and distressed it to look like it had been left outside for a while. It was what I had determined as the perfect height for Oscar\u2019s display.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t too low for people to view at eye level, and it wasn\u2019t too high to block the artwork on the wall behind him.<\/p>\n

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The final touch was to build a support rod and stand to keep him on when he\u2019s inside his trash can.\u00a0 The base had to be small enough to fit inside the can, and the support rod had to be just tall enough so when he peeked out the top of the can, the perspective was right for the optics I was trying to attain.<\/p>\n

I had drawn up some plans and submitted them to my pal Kyle at Plastic Depot a while back (he does all my puppet stands and cabinets) but with the Covid 19 protocols going on in stores, he was quite busy fabricating \u201cblast shields\u201d to protect the retailers\u2019 checkout staff.\u00a0 Virtually all the Plexiglas shields we see in our area stores were built by Kyle\u2019s company.\u00a0 So I made other arrangements so as not to further burden his workload.<\/p>\n

In my storage I had a solid wood base from a torso bust I bought a while back.\u00a0 A 7\/8\u201d dowel would fit perfectly inside the support, and I just happened to have one in my garage.\u00a0 I sawed it off to the desired height, drilled a hole through it one inch from the top, put a chunk of foam rubber on the top of the dowel, put a piece of armature wire through the foam topper, inserted it through the dowel, and tied it off on the other side. That way it would give Oscar\u2019s head plenty of cushion to rest on.<\/p>\n

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Just having a raw wood dowel for him to rest on may have damaged or dented his foam rubber head over time, with the continued pressure of the weight of the puppet.\u00a0 But the foam buffer should work nicely.\u00a0 The wire would keep the topper on top of the dowel securely, so when I pulled the puppet off the stand the topper won\u2019t come off with it.<\/p>\n

I placed the rod and stand inside the can, placed Oscar atop it, and took a picture.\u00a0 My Oscar the Grouch replica Muppet project, which I had started on Christmas Eve of 2019, was finally complete.\u00a0 And I\u2019m VERY happy with the results!\u00a0 I learned a great deal from the experience. I hope you like him!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though Oscar has always been one of my favorite Muppet characters (I like him for the same reason I like Tony Clifton \u2013 he\u2019s rather charmingly abrasive) the thought didn\u2019t occur to actually build one until I won a tour of the Henson Creature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9418","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wallyontheweb.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}