The Maker’s Lab 2023-2025 Phase #3 – Tanya Ang

Last December 2024, I received an invitation by Myra Loke and Daniel Sim to be part of the production of Bubble Up, Bubba! (2025) as a Puppet Designer / Maker under The Maker’s Lab programme. I remember being absolutely thrilled at the opportunity, though it wasn’t long before the realisation of the responsibilities this role entailed and my limited experience in puppet-making began to set in.

In fact, the making experiences I had prior were sporadic – coming in as an extra hand in productions, or being an observer in puppet-making workshops/masterclasses – though I did previously co-build a rod puppet under the guidance of Myra Loke and Oliver Chong in 2023. Hence, I was doubtful of my ability to take on the responsibility of Puppet Designer.

Where do I start? What if my design is ugly? What if I look stupid and inexperienced in front of the entire creative team? What if I can’t finish building in time? Or worse – what if I can’t deliver what the show needs, and the rest of the team has to clean up after my mess?

However, Daniel assured me that he will be guiding and supporting me at every step of the way. And thus, I embarked on this little journey as a Puppet Designer.

In Bubble Up, Bubba!, I was given the task of designing two distinct puppets – Bubba and Bubble. Bubba is the main character of the show who is going to the pool for the first time, and Bubble is an entity from the pool water who befriends Bubba.

Like in any production, the first step is to consider these questions:

1. Who are these characters / puppets?
2. What do these characters / puppets need to do in the show?
3. How does this inform the way they are being manipulated?
4. How many performers / puppeteers will be manipulating each puppet?

In addition, Bubble Up, Bubba! is a unique production because it was created specifically for neurodiverse audiences (specifically Individuals with Autism). Hence, I also had to make these specific considerations throughout the designing process:

1. How to incorporate multi-sensory elements to engage the audiences?

2. How to make the puppet visually engaging to support the storytelling? 

Designing Bubba was relatively straightforward since it was pretty much the same structure as other typical rod puppets we have in The Finger Players except with some modifications – which I will expound on a little more in the next section.

The main consideration for Bubba was the outward appearance of the puppet. Since this production was created for neurodiverse audiences (Individuals with Autism) and the creators (Sindhura Kalidas and Myra Loke) wanted it to be more tactile to appeal to their sensitivities, I designed the puppet to incorporate various textures in the costume such as mesh (on sleeves and seams), leather, glue dots (on finger tips to add replicate the pruning of fingers in water) and plastic/silicone (for goggles and floats).

Another consideration was to look at how Bubba relates to its environment (i.e. the set). Designed by Cheryl Tan, the colour range of the set was grounded in light blues and whites. Since Bubba is the main character of the show, I wanted the colour scheme of Bubba to stand out from the set to bring focus to the character. Hence, I chose colours such as orange, yellow, vermillion, and dark blue in contrast to the set.

For the general look of Bubba, I wanted Bubba to be have an innocent/wide-eyed disposition and a cartoonish look.

Hence, I specifically designed Bubba to have a bigger head to body ratio, and with a slightly raised eyebrows to further enhance that wide-eyed / eager personality. Also, I wanted Bubba to have a goofy and playful personality hence I added a bit of an embellishment to bring that character out – a teeny tiny rubber duck pin on the costume. During the second creative meeting, Myra and Sindhu liked the idea and wanted to emphasize that more – hence, Daniel and I also decided to incorporate the rubber ducky arm floats for Bubba.

Designing Bubble, on the other hand, was a little more challenging. Considering the features of an actual Bubble – light, iridescent, fluid and formless – it was difficult to find materials that would fit into that description.

However, Daniel managed to find a spinning toy with a thin iridescent film that is very fluid and responsive to movements – it can be contracted and expanded; when it spins, it gives off an illusion of a bubble. Hence, we decided to adopt this structure to build my design off from.

Since Bubble is a friendly entity that befriended Bubba in the show, I wanted Bubba to also have a face to emphasise on the cartoonish look. In addition, to allow for more expressions, I have also decided to add “arms” – which is made of out of plastic baubles attached to clear boning strips as arms.

As Bubble is an entity that comes out from the pool, I also wanted Bubble’s colour to be within the same scheme as the set – white, bluish, and iridescent.

We first began building Bubba – which was a good balance between working within the scope of familiarity and challenging myself. Although Bubba has a structure similar to the rod puppets that I was familiar with, there were also specific modifications made.

Since Bubba was primarily manipulated by one puppeteer (Deonn Yang), and the puppet was required to swim, we had to add strings to the puppet to make the swimming movement possible.  Daniel had already designed and built a prototype of a rod puppet with strings attached. Thankfully, when I built the actual puppet, and dressed it (with sponge and costumes), the string mechanism still worked well.

Also, we explored building the puppet with several modifications to the joints. Usually, when we build elbow and knee joints, we often attach Velcro strips to the back of the joints, and tape leukoplast over them like so:

However, we have learnt that such joints sometimes end up twisting sideways. Instead, we sawed a slit between the wood structure and inserted bag straps as joints, and secured it with wood glue and toothpicks.

This ensures that the arms / knees doesn’t twist around as much. Bag straps were used because they are very durable. However, there was one instance during the show that one of these bag straps detached from the ankle joint after being pulled on by one of the audiences.

In order to fix the joint, I would have to rebuild the entire leg – and I did not have enough time to do that because we had already opened the show. In the end, I had to revert back to the original method of glueing the strap onto the wood, stapling it and then leukoplast it to secure the joint. Though the bag strap method helps with the mobility of the joint, I have learnt that it might not necessarily be “fix-friendly” if it ever gets torn during the production.

For Bubba’s swimsuit costume, we ended up needing to sew it from scratch as the ones that we sourced were either too stiff or of the wrong size for the puppet. I had zero experience in sewing costumes before thus this was very exciting for me.

To make a costume, I’ve learnt that you need to first make measurements, draw the patterns, sew a toile to check if the measurements fit, and eventually sew the actual costume for the puppet.

During this process, I even got a hand in trying out the sewing machine! As the timeline was rather tight and I had already started building Bubble at this point, Daniel helped me with sewing a toile and finishing some parts of the costumes.

Although we spent more time building Bubba, the process was much more straight-forward than building Bubble.

Building Bubble was more of an experimental process. I had to tweak the design as we went along. Using the spinning toy’s structure as a point of departure, Daniel built a prototype using rods and polyester boning like the image here.

Upon building the structure, we realised that adding too much boning, the flexibility of the Bubble will be too stiff. On the other hand, adding too little boning, we would lose the shape of Bubble (and it might not support the weight of the baubles later on).  Hence, we had to find a balance.

After which, we sewed on the fabric to each panel and added baubles to dress the structure.

As the plastic baubles added weight – and I realised that it affected the shape of the structure – I experimented with switching some of the baubles to styrofoam balls. However, we realized that the Styrofoam balls might get scratched easily, and looks too opaque to give off the illusion of it being a bubble. In the end, I settled with having lesser baubles to reduce weight.

After sewing all the panels together, I also realised that the tension between the fabric and the boning affected the flexibility of the puppet. Bubble was no longer able to contract and expand. Hence, I also decided to cut an opening on one of the panels to release some tension.

Although the process was challenging at times, but my heart is absolutely full from all the newly developed skills I now have. I am beyond grateful to The Finger Players for the opportunity and the generosity that was given to me by Daniel throughout the process.

During the making process, Daniel was very involved in helping me design and build the structures of the puppets. As I was a new puppet-designer, my instincts were mainly based on how I wanted the puppet to look, and I was not sure how to design the internal structure/mechanisms to support that.

Also due to the timeline of the production, we did not have enough time for me to explore building structures/prototyping. Hence, Daniel had to jump in at some points to design/build and I took his lead on that.

In my next venture as a puppet designer and maker, I hope to have the opportunity to explore constructing complex internal structure and mechanisms for puppets. Additionally, I look forward to broadening my repertoire of materials and tools so that I have a wider vocabulary for my future designs.