Dragon cable puppet finished

Video here: [link]

Here's my prototype dragon cable puppet, all finished! I do plan to redo his horns, because this set is made from Model Magic Fusion and they're too soft. I have some Sculpey, but the horns are made with a wire armature and I don't have any wire that's safe for baking right now. I just used these temporarily so he won't look so much like a kangaroo.

He's a Soba Dragon. "Soba" means "noodle" in Japanese. I thought it fit.

The fabric is faux fur. He has a wire armature, and the mechanical bits are a simple ball joint made from a wooden bead on a wire and paper mache, with a Du-Bro flexible airplane pushrod for the control cable. (You can see what the mech looks like here: [link]) The grip at the end of the cable is another, oval wooden bead held on by super glue and hot glue. His eyes are plastic safety eyes, hand-painted by me with glow in the dark paint and acrylic model paint. The dark picture doesn't really capture how bright they glow, it's a pretty cool effect. His nose is a simple plastic safety nose. He also has a magnet in his chest so he can sit on my shoulder, with another magnet under my shirt.

His neck ended up too long thanks to the fact that I haven't made an armature in years. I call him Noodle because of that. But he's just a prototype, so it's ok. I made some changes to the pattern, and the next one will hopefully be easier to control. Noodle has fairly good range of motion, but the cable requires more twisting to turn his head than it should. I think maybe I need to spend the extra money to get a Sullivan pushrod, everyone else seems to use those. Maybe that will twist better.