Isle of Dogs puppets

Object

The first step in the long process to make a stop-motion dog puppet is to sculpt it in plasticine. That’s then made into a mould, which you need when you’re making over 500 dog puppets like they did in Isle of Dogs (2018). But a mould doesn’t move, so the next step is to build a metal skeleton called an ‘armature’, which uses rods and ball joints to let the animator control the dog’s movements. The dog’s face has a separate armature that controls speech and expressions. The armature goes into the mould, gets covered in silicone, and is then painted and poked with real strands of hair to create the dog’s coat.

Curator Notes

It’s hard to wrap your head around the scale of work that went into creating the puppets for Isle of Dogs. In addition to cosmetic differences, between scenes, almost every character had duplicate puppets created in at least three sizes, sometimes up to five, depending on how many types of shots they were to be filmed in. An extreme close-up needs a very large version of the character. An extreme wide shot might require a half-inch-high one.

The puppets also needed to be durable enough to withstand filming, while flexible and expressive enough to convey emotion. There were a complex series of steel paddles and rods inside the face of each dog to be able to convey the slightest nuance. Human puppets had detachable faces with different expressions and mouth shapes on them. Sometimes a face would be swapped ten times a second to create natural-looking movements.

When a dog puppet is positioned by a puppeteer, the fur moves a few millimetres where it’s been touched. Over the course of filming a shot, this subtle movement creates a rippling effect in the fur called ‘boiling’. Normally this would be considered a mistake, but Wes Anderson liked it, as it emphasised the hand-made quality of the film. It also subtly reinforced the environment of the story. Given that the dogs have fleas and they’re standing outside in the wind, it makes sense that their fur would be moving, right?

– Assistant Curator Jim Fishwick

ISLE OF DOGS | Making of: Animators | FOX Searchlight video via SearchlightPictures' YouTube channel.

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Collection

Not in ACMI's collection

Previously on display

9 February 2023

ACMI: Gallery 1

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

182479

Curatorial section

The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Worlds → MW-02. Set Design → MW-02-C04

Collected

34569 times

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If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/100846--isle-of-dogs-puppets/ |title=Isle of Dogs puppets |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=28 March 2024 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}