This week I've been patterning the body, limbs, head and features for An1mal and making a faux fur covering for the puppet (also learned a new word - furfetti, which is the tiny bits of hair that mysteriously appear in your coffee when you're working with faux fur), while Roy has been hooking the cables that control the movements of the puppet up to the servos which will power them. At this point we can test one or two moving parts at a time, and below are a couple of quick tests - one with the mouth and ears, and another with the head tilt and turn. Today our behaviourist Elaine will be visiting again and hopefully we can start choreographing some of the animal's movements.

This is where we've got to this week with An1mal. It's starting to take a more solid shape, and mechanically it is working pretty well. The aluminium and plastic articulations inside the puppet are nearly finished, and I've added an outer shell for the head and torso by making hollow plastazote forms. It's been harder than I expected to make forms which hold their shape and position while allowing the cables and mechanical parts inside them enough room to move freely, but now that it's done I'm really looking forward to adding fur and seeing how the character of the animal develops.