Isabella Rossellini film stars Digital Isabella Rossellini

‘Marcel the Shell With Shoes On’ Puppet Makers Explain Their Process: Cheetos, Tampons and Googly Eyes

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Selome Hailu When director Dean Fleischer-Camp and star Jenny Slate wrote and produced their viral 2010 short film “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” they created the title character (voiced by Slate) as simply as possible.

The tiny creature was made from a real seashell, doll shoes, a spot of clay and a googly eye.Becky Van Cleve, head of puppet fabrication on the feature-length adaptation of the short, in theaters June 24 via A24, made sure Marcel was always in sight as she worked to get him ready for the big screen.“I kept him right on my desk in a case,” says Van Cleve, knowing the little guy needed to be made of stronger stuff for the long haul: Because real shells are slightly translucent, they don’t hold up to studio lights.

Van Cleve and her team opted to scan the original Marcel for inspiration and re-create him using digital sculpting software ZBrush before 3D printing him approximately 120 times for use in different scenes — each rigged with different wires, hooks and holes depending on whether Marcel was jumping in the air or pulling his pet lint by a leash made of a single hair. (Named Alan, the animal was truly just made of a piece of lint.) “Marcel and his Nana Connie [voiced by Isabella Rossellini] were lovingly sanded and anchored and detailed until they were all done,” says Van Cleve’s fellow fabricator Maria Andreotti. “It took about a day and a half to do the finishing on each puppet.

They would come back [from the printer] with lines called striations, and we had a team of amazing puppet makers sanding Marcels and Connies for days.”The characters’ googly eyes also required meticulous manipulation of various versions.

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