New guy question

anyway, check my FX link page for animatronic places, the link CC gave you has some cool( although) expensive) stuff on it oh, yeah at the bottom of the FX page is Chris Hillmans Animatronic links...gotta check that out

later
TOm

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What everyone seems to forget is that once we look past race, religion, gender, and all that, everyone on this planet is first and foremost...

...a PERSON

Circuitry that recognizes specific vocal commands is a little harder to come by, and you still have to build in outcomes to to each command. If you are failry experienced with electronics it shouldn't be too hard to assign relays or SCRs to turn on servos or servo control circuitry.

Like Lou, I am unaware of anyone who sells kits that are designed to translate speech directly into servo actions for anmatronic heads, if that is what you are looking for. If you want simple mouth opening and closing, can you simply have the operator press a handheld switch to do this, much as a traditional puppeteer opens and closes the mouth of their puppet to synchronize with their speech?

Well Rick Lazzarini and the team at THE CHARACTER SHOP a full functioning makeup shop has developed an item known as THE WALDO. Below is the article from his web site which details how it works though I don't know if it's a proprietary item or if they develop them for sale to the makeup artist public. But here is the article. It seems that it's not your run of the mill animatronic system but a more high end, high tech system using both animatronics, kinetics, ergonomics and telemetry. Probably WAY out of most anyone's price range for doing effects such as these. This WALDO takes the movement and inputs it through a computer system (possibly with a specific software to replay later is possible I guess). But the movements made by the actor wearing the WALDO are duplicated on the animatronic creature or whatever. Quite an interesting item. But for sale... don't know. You could contact them I suppose if you had a lot of money to spend. I'd guess it's pricey if even available for sale.
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Waldo®: TCS' trademark for its brand of ergonomic-gonio-kineti-telemetric input devices for controlling its puppets and animatronics. Ergonomic because it is engineered to fit a puppeteer's or performer's body (and/or head and/or face) and comfortably allow a wide range of physical freedom. Gonio- and kineti-metric because it measures the angle and movement of the wearer's joints and limbs. And telemetric because the movement data is measured and sent via remote control. In simpler terms, an electro-mechanical rig you wear that makes a puppet (whether actually three dimensional or a CGI "electronic puppet") mimic your movements.

The term was first used in a Robert Heinlein short story, which was about a disabled scientist named Waldo who managed to build devices that would amplify his strength. These "waldoes" went on to replicate bigger machines, and so on. At least that's the way I remember it happened. NASA scientists nicknamed some of their early telemetry systems "waldo", and when the rare telemetry device popped up, sometimes that caught the nickname.

When we started pioneering the use of telemetric input devices for puppetry, we researched the name "Waldo" with the trademark registry. It had never been officially appropriated; no one had ever gone to market with telemetry devices, called them waldoes, and trademarked it. So, The Character Shop applied for and received the trademark for its line of input devices. Now, we've been accused of ripping Mr. Heinlein off; that's far from the case. We obtained the trademark with utter respect, and in an homage to Mr. Heinlein. Mr. Heinlein wrote a work of fiction, and a character in the story was named Waldo. One cannot copyright the name of a fictional character in literature, unless, perhaps it originates with the author. Mr. Heinlein was not intending to market telemetry devices, he was writing a science fiction story. So there was no need or reason for him to trademark the name. Just as Asimov popularized the term "robot", Mr. Heinlein has an inspirational claim to the term.

The appeal of the Waldo® is that it allows any single puppeteer or performer to control many multiple axes of movement on a synthetic character. In the "old days", people just threw a team of "lever pullers" on a puppet; look at old pictures of the crew that was required to operate E.T.; quite a crowd! The problem with that, aside from the expense, is that you've got too many individuals trying to coordinate their manipulations and timing into a unified performance; the more people involved, the more difficult it is. Even multiple-axis joysticks don't address the problem fully; if the control axes are not mapped out in a anthropomorphically analogous pattern, the most a single puppeteer can really control with each arm is about 4 axes, versus 12 per arm in a good Waldo®. In the case of the Facial Waldo®, many expression and head movements that previously were operated by hand are finally relegated to where they belong; the performer's face and head! This leaves his or her hands free to operate even more, analogous points of movement. Our system allows the reduction of the puppeteer team to its' basic core; this becomes even more important as today's animatronic characters become jam-packed with additional features that need controlling.

Our Waldoes® are designed to meet any number of criteria; they are often composed of machined plastic and metal joints, leather, and nylon strapping. They can employ linear or rotary potentiometers or encoders, Polhemus®, optical, angular, and other sensors. Each is custom-made for a particular purpose. Our expertise in the field is why companies such as Rhythm and Hues, P.D.I., and Walt Disney Imagineering have subcontracted our services to build their performance animation Waldoes®.

GOOD LUCK!!

FXMan

they sell the skull at halloweenmart.com for 28 bucks, I wouldn't use this sort of mechanism for any other sort of head, seeing as how it is very cheezy.. but it's a skull... the only thing you can do with speech is make the mandable go up and down...you say "hey" the mouth opens, you say "ho" the mouth opens.. no lips no cheeks.. just a jaw.. it should work perfectly.

quote:

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This is an example of a simple sound activated momentary switch.

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I hope you are a wealthy person because it's gonna take a fair amount of money to do this effect. You need to buy a card for your computer that has electrical outputs for activating servos, motos, lights etc. Dont ask me what they are called but you can get them in a computer robotics kit. They control the car or robot from the computer.

Anyway, once you have that, you then need software that will change each sylabol into a signal that gets transfered into the card and then into the appropriate servos.

But, why do all that when you can have a friend off to the side with a remote control making all of the facial expressions as you speak? Oh well. If you need more info, i guess you could contact me but, i dont really know a lot about this stuff, just the basics.

Seriously NO offence taken. I just merely mentioned what - as you say - "exactly what he asked for". Notice too that I DID qualify that it was a professional use item that would cost a fortune to have and use. Nevertheless, I understand YOUR contention that this IS after all, a low budget board. Solutions abound which range from -0- to more than most people would or could spend. OPTIONS however, is the key in anything that ever gets posted. And while perhaps, people with this post, didn't offer cheap ways to do it, they offered something for someone with an ounce of creativity could take and use to figure out how to solve their dilemma. And it's not just this post but others as well all over the boards. I do understand what you're saying. I just offered the maximum end of the spectrum while someone else might offer the chewing gum and gaffers tape solution at the other end. But I am not offended by your statement. You ARE right. Just a gentler and kinder response would have been more appreciated though I will still accept what you say - in the spirit in which you say it.

Thanks for your input. Varying opinions are always that - varying opinions. And while Waldoes are out of anyone's price range on this board (unless they're independently wealthy) it's merely a viewpoint from which a creative mind can adapt other methodology.

FXMan
Moderator

If we simply assumed that high end professional solutions were not worth examining, we wouldn't see all the low budget steadi-cam (rail systems, & etc) designs that we've had posted here. While I don't think that the low budget versions would provide indistinguishable results from the best equipment, they come close enough.

Just realizing how something is done "the hard way" is enough to stimulate some into designing an alternate solution or modifying their expectations.