side-to-side eye mechanism Posted by ArthurS on Aug 15, 2012
Am I on the right track???
Rectangle wire frame with ping pong balls on ends.
straight wire attached to back of each eye.
Second wire piece with loops on end. The wires from the eyes go trough the loops. The middle attaches to the frame to give a pivit point. Mechanism is operated by moving with your finger in the larger triangle seen in the lower left picture.
I tried to make this a lot more simple by just connecting the eyes and moving them with one solid piece, but that prevented the eyes from rotating around the axis so I got very little movement. I had to have something moving together, but that were free-floating and independent of each other. Works ok, but I haven't mounted it. Looking for suggestions before I proceed!
Rectangle wire frame with ping pong balls on ends.
straight wire attached to back of each eye.
Second wire piece with loops on end. The wires from the eyes go trough the loops. The middle attaches to the frame to give a pivit point. Mechanism is operated by moving with your finger in the larger triangle seen in the lower left picture.
I tried to make this a lot more simple by just connecting the eyes and moving them with one solid piece, but that prevented the eyes from rotating around the axis so I got very little movement. I had to have something moving together, but that were free-floating and independent of each other. Works ok, but I haven't mounted it. Looking for suggestions before I proceed!
Re: side-to-side eye mechanism Posted by Shawn on Aug 16, 2012
Yep you got it. You are right that the connection between the two eyes must be able to pivot o each rod coming off the eye. If this was in inside of say a vent or marionette then you could make that connection something like cord or leather which would be flexible since in that instance you would normally use a string pulling from each post off the back of the eye to manipulate them. I did one set with screw eyes off the back (I was using wooden eyes) and then simply looped each end of my connecting wire around the screw eye of each. This again though was on a marionette and that may put the access to control to high in the head for a hand in mouth puppet.
If your eyes are not tracking together well enough I would say it would simply be an issue of tightening up the slop in wire wrap around each eye post. With your wires coming out and down off the eyes another connection option between them could be a piece of wood dowel drilled in each end that you slipped up over the wire post. This could also help control the slop since you could drill the holes pretty precise so they fit snug but still allowed rotation. Thing is you would then need to create a trigger or loop on the center of the wood and with your method you have this built in to the bend of the wire.
If your eyes are not tracking together well enough I would say it would simply be an issue of tightening up the slop in wire wrap around each eye post. With your wires coming out and down off the eyes another connection option between them could be a piece of wood dowel drilled in each end that you slipped up over the wire post. This could also help control the slop since you could drill the holes pretty precise so they fit snug but still allowed rotation. Thing is you would then need to create a trigger or loop on the center of the wood and with your method you have this built in to the bend of the wire.
Re: side-to-side eye mechanism Posted by Shawn on Aug 16, 2012
Nice find Na! You have to really study it to understand what is going on but once you do it all makes sense. Notice he is using a very stable base of wood for this set up. That is the one thing that is important when creating mechs like this inside of a foam head. Just attaching something into the foam may not work because when you go to make your movement the foam it is attached to moves instead of the mech. Of course in this case his base is used as a trigger also in order to snarl the bridge of the nose. Pretty clever.
Re: side-to-side eye mechanism Posted by Na on Aug 16, 2012
Posted by: Shawn Sorrell on Aug 16, 2012
Nice find Na! You have to really study it to understand what is going on but once you do it all makes sense. Notice he is using a very stable base of wood for this set up. That is the one thing that is important when creating mechs like this inside of a foam head. Just attaching something into the foam may not work because when you go to make your movement the foam it is attached to moves instead of the mech. Of course in this case his base is used as a trigger also in order to snarl the bridge of the nose. Pretty clever.
Yeah, that's one I hadn't seen before until just before I posted. I've got it bookmarked now
If you want one for inside foam heads, Hobey has another example:
http://www.hobeyford.com/files/hndppteyes.JPG
The mech sits on the mouth structure, rather than the head. Edit: It's only blinkers, not side-to-side though.
Loading