Juggler Automaton

Now that I finished that painting, it is now time to switch gears to kinetics. Its now the middle of may so I guess I have spent about 2 weeks figuring out the mechanics of this new automaton. I kinda knew that I wanted to do a juggler to go with the fat lady I had done earlier so I decided to make him move. 

I knew pretty much what I wanted him to do but it was really a strain on my brain to figure out how to do it. Experience is starting to pay off a bit but the biggest help was getting a woodworking magazine with some plans in it. I was able to copy the design of the mechanisms and apply it to my juggler guy. So after about 2 weeks of fooling around and experimenting this is what I got:

So now its time to get to the fun stuff, the figure. I'm going to try to keep up this blog as I go cause I want to keep track of all my trials and errors. I know I have to make the mechanics fit into the figure so Im sort of going back and forth between making the inside match the outside or vice versa. I know I want this guy to have some character so for now i am working on some sketches.  I will go back to the insides when I get to that point. So here is what I have so far:

This is just his face of course. I ll put more up as I go.

 Here are some more ideas I have:

Here is a sketch of his body minus the arms.

And here is an animation of what I hope he will do: