What are caricature puppets?
Caricature puppets are usually muppet-type puppets, glove puppets or marionettes, which are designed and made to look like a real person - someone you know or yourself, for instance. In fact, they can be any puppet type.
Caricature puppets (or portrait puppets) are usually made as presents, and are commissioned puppets - you won’t find them in stores. That is because not everyone looks like you, or your friend, or family member, and so they must, by nature, be commissioned.
Because of the highly personal nature of the puppet designs, they can be very difficult to make. It’s along the lines of doing a portrait in oils; it requires a certain skill to capture the essence of a personality, as well as to recreate the person’s features, shapes, and colourings. On top of that, you are transposing to puppet materials, which is all the more difficult.
Caricature puppets are definitely not something you should start out making, but if you’ve gotten a handle on the basic concepts of puppet design and building, you can always give it a go and see how you fare. - Don’t forget, there’s a reason why they call it ‘caricature’. It’s because human puppets always look slightly cartoonish. Instead of trying to avoid that fact, embrace it.
If you want someone to make you a caricature puppet, contact your local UNIMA [link to be added] branch, which will have a list of puppet makers in your area.
David Tennant as Dr Who puppet made by (and photo with permission of) Dr Puppet
This post AKA puppets that look like you, AKA another name for a puppet that looks like a person
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@Francien, You are probably referring to making a muppet-type puppet. There is a lot of info out there for making them, but I recommend you start with the free patterns here:
... School of Puppetry on Free muppet-type puppet patterns: A listhttp://www.schoolofpuppetry.com.au/tutorials.php/muppet-type-puppet-patterns-a-list
or you can head to Puppetsandstuff.com and look for any number of useful forum posts on how to make them. They have videos, a few free patterns listed, along with lots of tips and hints. From there, I recommend you purchase a book (The Foam Book is excellent, you can find it at Amazon) or pattern. Really the free patterns that are online aren't anywhere near as good as the patterns available at sites like Projectpuppet.com and (in blatant advertising) my own. The patterns are very much step-by-step with print-outs and photos, whereas the freebies tend to be very much harder to follow. Other than that, I'm afraid I can't help further without knowing more specifics about what you want to know about making them.