Hoots the Owl puppet replica and Birdland playset

Hoots the Owl

My favorite Sesame Street character (next to Cookie Monster) is probably Hoots the Owl. For those of you who don't know him, Hoots is a jazz owl who plays the saxophone, he was preformed by Kevin Clash, he joined the cast in Season 17 (1985) and was sadly removed in Season 37 (2006). Today I finished building a puppet replica of Hoots the Owl. He is very big and also very soft and Fluffy. He is made out of a brown Sherpa fleece throw blanket. His eyes are Styrofoam balls covered with yellow and orange felt scraps. His face is made of a white feather boa. His beak and feat are made of yellow polyester fleece. You can't really see it in this photo but he has a vest made of and old brown t shirt. His saxophone is made of tin foil and is covered with shinny duct-tape. His left hand is a live hand and his right hand is a dummy and has the saxophone glued to it.Another thing i have been working on is a cardboard model of the jazz club that Hoots works at called Birdland. Birdland was a jazz club on Sesame Street in the late 80's until around the early 2000's that was based on a real jazz club that Charlie Parker used to perform at. The interior was shown in the mid 80's and the exterior was shown in the Around the Corner part of Sesame Street in the 90's. This cardboard model is for the set of Safari Mall, I just thought that it would be cool to put in the mall because it isn't on Sesame Street anymore and I wanted a location for Hoots.

The interior of Birdland

I have seen the interior of Birdland a bunch of times but I've never seen the exterior so I decided to design the exterior myself.

My Birdland model

So far I just made a cardboard building with some pencil drawings on it and a window. When i get some time later I'm going to paint it a deep red and the Birdland sign at the top glow in the dark.