20.2.15

Animatronic Thesis

I have been reviewing some of the articles I have found in spfx magazine. I was published in the 80's-90's and has lots of interviews with animatronic special effects artists. I have then been taking printing screens of the pages and placing them into the correction section of my literature review folder for easy access. I have also come across an interesting area within animatronics that I feel may be interesting for future experiments so I will keep that information for a later project.

I have also been looking at the control rig used in the teenage mutant ninja turtles films (1990's) as they use motion tracking of the puppeteers lips to control the lip movement of the animatronic.

I have also joined LINKEDIN with a month long professional trail so I can directly gain access to industry professionals.

Animatronic Build:

I have spent the past few days working on putting together the jaw mechanism for the animatronic. (1.1) I have used the robotic parts left over from my last build. The mechanism works pretty well, I am driving the jaw off two servos linked together with a y cable to control them simultaneously from one controller.

1.1

In the image the bottom two U servo brackets are connected with a long U bracket. This is just to keep them together during the testing. Eventually the two short U brackets will be linked together at the servo horn, this will give me more space for the tongue mechanism. The system give great movement and stability, I used the jaw mechanism design from my last build and just scaled it up. The advantaged of using these materials is that they are very light and strong. The metal wire is there to give you an idea of the placement on the upper and lower jaws. I have also put the teeth that james made for me next to the mechanism for scale. 

Feelings:

I am feeling happy with the progress over the past few weeks, I can now see how the thesis and the project will come together and compliment each other. It was a great concern that they would be two separate elements and I did not want that. I wanted the project to be developed alongside the thesis and be justified via my research into control systems and realism. 

Evaluation:

This has been a very positive experience, the mechanism works well and I have a real positive outlook concerning its performance. The research project is also coming along well so that is also very satisfying and positive. 

Analysis:

The current situation of the project is pretty good, however it is still in the initial prototyping stage but making prototype mechanisms to the correct scale helps when trying to estimate size and servo torque. 

Conclusion:

I do not think there is anything I could have done to improve my approach over the past few days. I have balanced family, work and studying pretty well so I hope I can continue at this pace and enthusiasm.

Action Plan:

I have decided to use thermoplastic for the models teeth as well as some of the internal mechanisms. I have ordered some thermoplastic pigmentation to colour the teeth yellow/greenish and hopefully make them look pretty realistic. I will also experiment making teeth with the thermoplastic in the next session.