Working arms for a very large puppet

[CrowTeeRobot]

Hi there, I love your Totoro costume and I think I may have come up with a rather simple system for a waving arm mechanism, if you're still looking for one. The following are two pictures to illustrate what I had in mind.

The frame itself would be attached to the backpack, and the position it's shown in here would be at full tension, with the arm in the upright position. With no tension on the line, the arm would simply hang at your side like normal. The frame could be made of lightweight wood and/or pvc tubing so it wouldn't put stress on the costume. I'm a bit tired at the moment, so I may not be all too clear, but if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can.

Hope I can help, and again, I love the walk-around Totoro!

 

[Macavite]

The frame itself would be attached to the backpack, and the position it's shown in here would be at full tension, with the arm in the upright position. With no tension on the line, the arm would simply hang at your side like normal. The frame could be made of lightweight wood and/or pvc tubing so it wouldn't put stress on the costume. I'm a bit tired at the moment, so I may not be all too clear, but if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can.

We actually ended up going with a very similar pattern using PVC pipe. The biggest difference was to explicitly make the bending part specifically a latch, but to keep the shoulder socket universal. That way I can _twist_ the oar to raise the arm, this has proved to be much better in terms of the arm strength required.

There's rings for a tension wire in the skeleton right now, but we couldn't find a lever mechanism that didn't make the arm waving look really herky-jerky AND i can reach the join my with my hand (barely) so right now I'm just operating the joint manually.

Video of said arm in action (for the really impatient, skip to :30)