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Fiesta the Dog
Angus 'Fiesta' Samuels is a dog with a keen sense of purpose. When he was a pup, he wanted help travellers in the snowy mountains, with a big barrel of brandy around his neck. Unfortunately, the St Bernard breed had the monopoly on that career, so he became a sniffer dog instead. When his morals disagreed with his sniffing orders, he went AWOL. His nickname, Fiesta, is not due to a love of carnivals. As a new-born, he was found in a box underneath a Ford Fiesta by Mr and Mrs Samuels, who took him in as one of their own. He now lives in the highlands of Scotland, and is planning to travel to Loch Ness to sniff out the famous monster. If he can't smell it, nobody can.
Way back in the early nineties, I was contacted by a friend who was putting together a pilot for a children's television programme. Even though I had never done anything like it before, when he asked if I would like to be a puppeteer on the show I jumped at the chance. Inbetween takes, I found myself dissecting the puppet I was given to work with, a rat called Max. He looked fantastic, but was not built to last and I wondered if I could do better. So I decided to give puppet building a go, and Fiesta was the result.
Fiesta was 'born' in 1994 and was constructed in a similar fashion to the puppet that I had worked with - a combination of hand puppet and rod puppet. The body was built from chicken wire, with foam to make it more comfortable to hold. The arms and hands were also made of chicken wire, connected to the body using elastic bands. The idea was to have the arms controlled by rods built from coat hangers, and the head to be controlled as a hand puppet.
The head itself was almost entirely made of Meccano (for the uninitiated Meccano is a children's toy where you build things out of pre-cut metal and screws). A drop of glue was applied to each screw to prevent them from loosening. Foam was then wrapped around it all to give the head shape. The Meccano allowed the construction of a moveable jaw, and was strong. It was an idea that I had picked up from the children's show, as that was how that puppet's jaw was created. To finish things off, the head and hands were covered in grey fur fabric from my old car seat covers (hence the nickname Fiesta), with black and red felt for the inside of the mouth and shop-bought eyes and nose. Over the chicken wire body, Fiesta wore one of my little brother's cast-off coats.
Overall, I was happy with the look of Fiesta, but I realised very soon that I had fallen into the trap of blindly following the design of the puppet that I had worked with in the past, whilst adding more metal to make it longer lasting. The result was a good looking puppet that was awkward and heavy to use. All the metal inside made it strong, but trying to hold it above your head so the puppeteer was out of sight was impossible. As the arms were metal, they had limited movement and the head could not turn at all. There was no way that you could give the puppet true lifelike movement. Still, I knew where I had gone wrong, and I am proud of my first puppet creation.
Building Fiesta
Max the Rat:
The Puppet That Inspired Me
This website is the copyright of Benjamin Burford-Jones 2014, except quotations and photographs used to illustrate various traditional and television puppets.
No material should be reproduced in any form whatsoever for purposes of commercial gain without obtaining the copyright holder’s express permission.
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