Team Smithereen – Apealeing Productions

Team Smithereen was a series of around 2 minute shorts made for Disney XD in 2009 by the Dan Clark Company/W!ldbrain/Jetix Europe. It follows a hapless team of puppet stuntmen who, more often than not, get into trouble on some of their death-defying feats. (Quoted from the Team Smithereen Blog)

In 2012 a full length pilot was made, complete with bigger stunts, more in depth sets and character voices. I was on crew doing various tasks, mostly hand related.

I believe I made at least 30 pairs of hand armatures.

Hanging Hands — Each hand was coated in silicone before being placed in it’s hand mold and casted in silicon another layer of silicon

This double coat of silicon isn’t necessary for every project, but it does help the outer silicon stick to the hand armature better. Silicon loves to stick to silicon.

It also makes it less likely that any parts of the armature will protrude through while the puppets are crashing into and through things. They love their stunts.

toungesilicon — One of the characters (Brave Little Francis) has this ridiculously long tongue that he uses as sort of a lasso. This is me having some fun while I was seaming.

All silicon parts need to be seamed. This basically means removing all of the excess silicon that is not part of the final piece. You can see the bits still attach to the tongue that I haven’t gotten to yet.

Before I was designated to hand and tongue duty I was tasked to build some junk piles to decorate the Junkyard that Team Smithereen makes their home in.