Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville - Hound Puppet

Technical Director

For Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville, I knew I wanted a full size puppet. I had never attempted one before, but was up for the challenge. I knew I wanted the mouth to articulate, and the eyes to glow. I also wanted to make the skin as transparent and tight as possible to achieve the ghostly, emaciated look. I also wanted to add glow paint, because once it is revealed by Sherlock Holmes to be a real dog covered in Phosphorous, it would help bring home the tragedy of the animal.

Research and design

My major inspiration was Toby Olie and his fox puppet he designed for a production of The Secret Garden. It had a life to it that I wanted to get as close as I could to. I also loved the look and texture of one of his other dog puppets from The Grinning Man. Something I knew I needed to address was the size of the dog. Both of my Holmes and Watson actors were over 6 feet tall, so in order for the dog to be imposing next to them, it needed to be even bigger than I originally planned. Even though I wouldn’t be including legs, I sized the dog to stand at 3’-1/2” at the shoulder, and 7' feet long from snout to tail tip.

Finishing

Blue LEDs were added to the eyes with a battery back sitting between them. The Hound is described as “breathing fire” several times so I made sure that when it opened it’s mouth, the blue light would shin through. The head was covered in muslin, and the body/neck had a costume sock of bathing suit lycra sewn for it. Once the body was covered, I used glow-in-the-dark paint thinned for my airbrush. I also brushed it on heavier on areas I wanted to highlight. I then built a rig with UV LEDs that would hold the puppet during the show and charge the glow paint. Right before it went on, the whole puppet was given a once-over with a 100 LED UV Flashlight to boost the glow so it’d stand out clearly in the dark.