Bloody Plastic's Spaceballs the Yogurt Doll




So in early 2014 a friend of mine handed me a vinyl Disney Studios Yoda doll and a pair of costume pointed ears and asked me to make him a Spaceballs Yogurt doll. Always up for a challenge I accepted.

Yoda Doll

I started by cutting off the ears. I did a test with some Kneadatite green stuff modeling putty and found that it stuck pretty well to the vinyl.

Cut Ears Front Cut Ears Right Cut Ears Left

I then built up the face in sections. Green stuff has an 8 hour drying time so I could only do so much at once.

Face Sculpt 1 Face Sculpt 2 Face Sculpt 3 Face Sculpt 4

I then attached the ears with a combination of contact cement and brushable latex. If I had to do it again I'd probably just skip it and sculpt the ears from scratch as nothing seems to want to stick to them.

Attaching Ears Ears Attached Front Ears Attached Side

My friend gave me a pair of novelty bendy hand keychains to use for the hands. Again, I probably should have just sculpted them from scratch as painting them turned out to be a problem. He could only find right hands as well so I had to modify one into a left. I ziptied them onto the ends of the arms then used greenstuff to blend them in a bit.

Right Hand Palm Right Hand Back Left Hand Palm Left Hand Back

At this point I wanted to take it to the next level and add a pullstring. After searching online and locally it turns out even finding a pullstring doll is next to impossible. I finally lucked out and found a vintage Roger Rabbit doll at a thrift store.

Roger Rabbit Doll

I kinda felt bad tearing apart a new in box toy from 1988 but it was only $5. The voicebox didn't work anyway, the speed on it was messed up and garbled but the pullstring still worked which is all I needed.

Voice Box Front Voice Box Back Voice Box Inside

Next I bought a customizable greeting card off a guy on Ebay.

Greeting Card Electronics

Download the software from his website, rip the audio from the movie, download to the chip and I had a triggerable audio player. I mounted a reed switch inside the pullstring box and finetuned the sensitivity.

Reed Switch Closeup Reed Switch Connection Assembled Voicebox Front Assembled Voicebox Side

Here's a video of the pullstring in action:



Next up was mounting the voicebox in the doll. I slit the back and removed the stuffing. Cut some holes in the front to let the sound out then gorilla glue the voicbox in. A snap collar was added for the string to pass through then once the glue was dry he was restuffed and the back sealed up. Changing batteries will be a pain.

Slit Back Voicebox Attached

Next up was painting. As I said the ears and hands gave me trouble with the paint not drying. I started with a brown base coat the worked up levels of various golds and brown washes.

Brown Paint Gold Paint

A mutual friend sewed up the robes.

Yoda Robes Yogurt Robes

Then I tossed together a quick cane out of a coathanger and Apoxie Sculpt.

Sculpted Cane Finished Doll

Adorable...



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