Animatronics and such

[Klarkkent]

Hey guys. Relatively new to the forum. Great to a part of such a great group of puppeteers, builders and fans.

I'm a relatively new builder. I've been working in special FX and make-up fx for 5 or so years now and I have started using my building and sculpting experience to build puppets. I have a fundemental knowledge of armatures and construction. It's the more complicated stuff that I'm getting into that I need any help that you guys can offer.

I'm building a 6ft hand manipulated/animatronic hybrid puppet. The mouth, neck, body and arms are manually controlled. The eyebrows and eyelids will be servo controlled. Anyone have any pictures, sketches or tutorials that I could look at of eye mechs, eyebrow and even eye movement, that'd be awesome.

Thanks

 

[gfarkwort]

....that sounds like a heavy puppet......but interesting
There are a few other topics on eye blinking mechanisms that have pictures and graphs and such
but all in all.......interesting

 

[ravagefrackle]

I'm building a 6ft hand manipulated/animatronic hybrid puppet. The mouth, neck, body and arms are manually controlled. The eyebrows and eyelids will be servo controlled. Anyone have any pictures, sketches or tutorials that I could look at of eye mechs, eyebrow and even eye movement, that'd be awesome.

Thanks

Welcome to the group,

eyeblinks are pretty complicated i rareley attempt them my self, (besides i normaly had people who were allready skilled at that building them , )

u might wantto try and look at some old cinefex magazines,, since u are doing sfx makeup, u may have sen a few of the making of books out there about animatronics, also u should check out some of the books on basic vent dummie eyes since i think the basic skills would apply to what you are doing

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Search the forum under "eye mech". The subject has been discussed many, many times and there's lots of good info in the archives. You may also want to check out this article which includes several good resources for animatronics.

 

[Klarkkent]

Thanks for the links and points in the right direction.

Yeah it's gonna be a pretty hefty puppet, both task wise and in size alone. It's going to take three people to animate it.

I've seen a few articles in Cinefex. I'll have to dig up some of those articles. I actually just joined a group on yahoo titled, simply, Animatronics. I'm hoping that will turn out to be fruitful.

I'll definitely post some pictures on here of the progress. See what you guys think. I'm sculpting the face and casting it out of foam latex. Customizing the eyes out of resin and teeth out of acrylic. Should be crazy. I'm looking forward to the finished product.

 

[gfarkwort]

Me too!........sounds interesting