Lip rig test

No springs on it yet but you get the general idea.

Animatronic jaw

Up / down movement, side to side and swinging jaw rig.

Animatronic Jaw Movement test 1.

Jaw movement documentation, running off two servos using a kam system, next stage is to rig the lips that are going to run independently from the jaw movement. 

Short stop-motion, and all the things i bought today.

Short stop motion test with new toy i got for christmas made from old tin cans, love it!! I think it has real potentional and i will adapt this idea for future projects. 

Today i also went on a massive shopping spree, and got the entire rig for my animatronic, I am going to be using the new Leonardo arduino controller with the V6 connector shield and a v4 shield incase i need to use my uno servo aswell. I got 4, 3.5 kg torque standard servos and 2 metal 8kg torque servos, aswell as prosthetic eyes, polythermo plastic moulding for shaping the head and eye lids, guitar string and thick wire for the pushing and pulling of parts, hooks, springs pretty much all the parts that i have planned for this project. Hopefully by the time i get back to Uni i will have atleast some of the foundations of this project put together. 

A failed time-lapse attempt

Experiment with ipad, time lapse speed was one shot every 30 seconds, unfortunately my ipad decided that it would go into hibernation so I've only got a short clip. Will try again though.

Animatronic Blueprints

Today i have primarily been working on redesigning the eye mechanism for my animatronic, the drive belt system may produce to much friction and make the whole animatronic move, and i want to keep vibration and sound down to a minimum so i purchased some ball and socket joints off ebay to go into the back of the eyes, and as long as i can match the socket up perfectly with the center on the eye it should give me a perfect 360 pivot point. the eyes will then be moved left to right and up and down by a system of spring loaded wires attached to a pair of servos. I have also come to realise that a secondary interface board will be needed this board is designed to fit up 6 servos where as the standard uno and new xl models only supply a pair of servo interfaces.

I have also been working on building my portfolio and because this year I am determined to take on board what was said last year, i have decided that like last year my portfolio will be in a html format, but with a new theme and more user interaction.

So cool its cold.

Today has been spent mostly doing my assignment on Mcluhan and Baurillard, so I have not had time to really do any practical things in lue of animation. But my custom made latex mask came for my animatronic so I thought id stick a picture up. I'm hoping its going to fit perfectly onto the exoskeleton i have made and is easy to articulate with wire and silicone glue.

Stopmotion past and present.

Stopmotion (Catchup)

Here is a visual set of experiments, tests i have done with different armatures figurines over the past few weeks, i really wanted to test the usefulness of making a solid posable armature against my wire version i have made last year. They both has positive and negative aspects to their uses, the fixed wire armature was less study but easier to manipulate into position compared to the armature model.

Pair of armatures, the top one broke eventually

 

Last years stop motion project.

Blog off.....we go.

Right ok, I will keep this up for as-long as i mentally can, but my mind does not work in a defined linear way. So here we go today i started back on track, its been a tough couple of months but now i feel i'm back and firing on all cylinders. I scripted a website for my projection mapping project last night ( www.skinpeeler.co.uk ). It's a project im going to be pushing to do for my final second year project. I feel its something thats not really been done on the course before and its an area that i think will be valuable to explore for future project. the idea is simple create a set of animations that can be projected i was researching different style and ideas and i think, that i'm going to try a different style from my usual all together. I feel that its time that I concentrate on more abstract ideas. The images i discovered whilst doing research for cc2 data visualisation have been stuck in my head for a while now and are starting to alter and change the outcome of most of my work at the moment.

The other thing i did today was time lapse photography it is such a great way of capturing so much and when you view it, it's like seeing the world through different eyes.