Carving a prototype head in polystyrene

Starting to get there. From poly sheet to cuboid laminated block to carved head...

Laminated construction technique

I have been looking at an amazing
Thomas Heatherwick designed temple:

This made me wonder about lamination as a technique for sculpting an automaton head.

The idea is to carve something as a model in a simple laminated material, then disassemble the model to create a series fo laminate layer templates. These could then be cut from the final material required (like wood or plastic or stone) and reassembled and finished off by carving out the edges of the steps by hand.

hmm...

Concept drawings

Making eyeball socket housings

Fabricating eyeball sockets

A prefabricated ball like this deodorant is handy and comes with a matching housing in which to rotate. Unfortunately as I want eventually to use a hand-made eyeball in another material (wood or possibly stone), this means I will most likely need to create a custom housing to match.

Part of this will also most likely be integral to the head that is eventually used.

The eyeball will sit between two plates. The front plate has a round hole with a diameter just slightly narrower than that of the ball.














The back plate has a square hole to allow a contol rod to move unrestricted in any up/down or left/right combination

Close up of the housing being glued

Prototyping eyelids

Trying out eyelid mechanism

Concept drawing

The eyes and sockets are from a deodorant. I have added some eyelids, which are 2 modified halves of the screw on top of the same deodorant.

Making eyeballs

Here's a prototype eyeball mechanism, built to try out in practise how to make eyballs move in any direction, by using 2 controls - one for up/down and one for left /right.

This is a test to see how it might be done in an automata.

The left right is controlled by a pivoting tube (cut from a ball point pen), and within it is a cable that controls up and down

the round casing limits the degree of left/right movement of the eyes when in an up or down position, and limits up and down, when in a left or right position. This means the casing should be square not circular

Video showing front and back of "head"

Cutting eyeballs

Obviously, why make the eys, when you can cut some off old deodorants. (Keeping old deodorants isn't weird is it?

...and fitting control rods in the back

New name for this blog

Micro Mr Punch is on hold at the moment, as it needs a film set with fixed camera and lighting rig set up so they do not have to be moved for probably 6 months. I don't have space for that now.

I have therefore decided to change this blog into a more general blog about making anything. I can then post anything about making slightly odd stuff all in one place then.

In the meantime, I am quite intrigued by automata...

Puppet Making on Flickr

Puppet Making, a group on Flickr.

This is the puppet making group I administer on Flickr. It's got some great armatures in it!

Puppet suitcase

Puppet suitcase prop
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

This is a suitcase made from papier mache, and used in puppet violence, as is entirely appropriate...

Finally looking like spring

I feel like have had zero time making stuff for at least a month. Need to build some sets, and get a camera rig set up in the shed that can be left there, even if laptop and camera are removed. NOOOOOO TIIIIME