Puppets

The past few days has been spent making puppet prototypes.
I gotta say it's very hard on the back, I have to stoop over my table and get really close because the wire and joints are so tiny.

I'm also having difficulty with using a dress. I've always had my characters have pants on and the dress thing gets really tricky when my character makes very wide movements with her legs...like running, which here will be lots of...obviously.
I can up with this 3 piece skirt thing that could work, but there are a few problems with it.
a) the puppet is getting really bulky in the hip area and could create shadows when I have it lit.
b) the skirt pieces and the legs (5 pieces in total) are all working from the same hinge which can make moving some pieces without disturbing the others really tricky and I can't really have more hinges in this area.

Another problem I didn't consider was that when I draw I tend to cancel out hard edges so when there are bends in elbows and things I make them very rounded and stylistic. I can't do this with the puppets and I'm worried it will conflict with the replacement puppets I will be doing at times which are previously drawn. The contrast may be cool though, who knows.