asy0uw1sh
New Member
Here's a little background info on how I designed the animatronics for a recent commission I was contracted to do.
I was sent the mask which helped immensly, the mask is truly a work of art, but unfortunately, this particular one, was prepped and assembled for display purposes, it was very heavy and the dreads were embedded a few inches each into a rigid foam inside of the crown, that all had to be painstakingly and carefully removed.
Here's a shot of a few of the dreads I managed to pull through the mask before removal from the foam.
Once that was achieved, I carefully and exactingly measured with a caliper the entire mask and then modeled the inner Rig, based on the measurements, they included eye to eye, eye to crown, inner chin to crown, brow to chin, fang to fang, just to name a few, the key and major challenge to this rig, is that due to limited space available within the mask I would need to leave the back and sides open as much as possible to allow for the wearer to have room and for the dreads to be re-embedded back into the mask, just not as deeply as before.
Once the Rig had been sculpted and measured time and time again, I cast it. Here is a shot of it in ultracal...
It then had to be recast in fibreglas, so I had to make of negative mold of the newly made ultracal positive mold, So I used silicone and cast it in fibreglas here are those shots...
Here are the two side by side.
Next I had to trim the fibreglas and cut out the appropriate eye holes, then it was time for a test fit...
I really lucked out, had it not been for the insane number of measurements, it would have taken a lot of tweaking, fortunately I only had to dremel one small area and sand down the brow a bit, then it fit literally like a glove.
I then wired and mounted the servos and attached the lower servo arms and encased all of the wiring for the lower mandibles, and added another servo with a cable attached to a joint pivot I made from scratch and strategically attached to the front of the mask to control the limited movement of the upper singular fang then I wired it all to the RC receiver and power supply.
Then I attached an inner form fitting face mask inside of the rig. I don't have shots of this aspect of the build, sorry. Next I added elastic to keep the rig firmly attached to the wearer's head and that's pretty much it.
Oh I almost forgot! I also made and installed pressure pad switches that fit comfortably onto the wearers fingers under the gloves. Simply tapping your fingers together operates the mask. This is wired to a second transmitter. I also included a traditional small transmitter that looks like something that would operate a RC car.
Pretty cool huh?
I was sent the mask which helped immensly, the mask is truly a work of art, but unfortunately, this particular one, was prepped and assembled for display purposes, it was very heavy and the dreads were embedded a few inches each into a rigid foam inside of the crown, that all had to be painstakingly and carefully removed.
Here's a shot of a few of the dreads I managed to pull through the mask before removal from the foam.
Once that was achieved, I carefully and exactingly measured with a caliper the entire mask and then modeled the inner Rig, based on the measurements, they included eye to eye, eye to crown, inner chin to crown, brow to chin, fang to fang, just to name a few, the key and major challenge to this rig, is that due to limited space available within the mask I would need to leave the back and sides open as much as possible to allow for the wearer to have room and for the dreads to be re-embedded back into the mask, just not as deeply as before.
Once the Rig had been sculpted and measured time and time again, I cast it. Here is a shot of it in ultracal...
It then had to be recast in fibreglas, so I had to make of negative mold of the newly made ultracal positive mold, So I used silicone and cast it in fibreglas here are those shots...
Here are the two side by side.
Next I had to trim the fibreglas and cut out the appropriate eye holes, then it was time for a test fit...
I really lucked out, had it not been for the insane number of measurements, it would have taken a lot of tweaking, fortunately I only had to dremel one small area and sand down the brow a bit, then it fit literally like a glove.
I then wired and mounted the servos and attached the lower servo arms and encased all of the wiring for the lower mandibles, and added another servo with a cable attached to a joint pivot I made from scratch and strategically attached to the front of the mask to control the limited movement of the upper singular fang then I wired it all to the RC receiver and power supply.
Then I attached an inner form fitting face mask inside of the rig. I don't have shots of this aspect of the build, sorry. Next I added elastic to keep the rig firmly attached to the wearer's head and that's pretty much it.
Oh I almost forgot! I also made and installed pressure pad switches that fit comfortably onto the wearers fingers under the gloves. Simply tapping your fingers together operates the mask. This is wired to a second transmitter. I also included a traditional small transmitter that looks like something that would operate a RC car.
Pretty cool huh?
