Juggler Continued

Well I said I was going to keep this up and I haven't. 

I just posted the second test video on Facebook so I am a bit behind here. I will try to catch up a little. Most of this drama has played out on face book so I wont be going into too much detail here. 

So I spent a lot of time trying out different kinds of mechanisms to get him to move the way I wanted which was basically throwing balls back and forth and maybe move his face a little. Then I found this magazine which I ordered and it had all kinds of great ideas and information in it (Thanks to Dug North)

By stealing ideas (learning) from this magazine I was able to get the mechanics to work pretty much the way I wanted. Below is the video of the first test for the juggler where I had all the mechanical parts but put together just a temporary test body:

Video not uploading  so you can see the videos here:

First Test of juggler

According to facebook that was around May 16th.

Then I went to work sculpting the actual face and body. The hardest part was making him look the way I wanted while fitting in all the mechanics and having them still function.

Here is a picture of him in progress:

 I used paper clay made of toilet paper, joint compound, white glue flour and linseed oil for most of him. I like it cause it is pretty non toxic and cleans up easily. I can sand it with a dremel tool or files and if I screw it up and can just put some more back on and try it again. His clothes are cloth dipped in a paper mache gesso made of similar ingredients. 

So I wont go into the tedium of trying different ways to get the balls to move (I ended up using one central piece with the three balls attached to springy wire things to get the best movement) and his mouth and eyes  

( I got a lot of help from my FB friends on the automata page on that).

As of today this is what I have. This is the second test video. Now I just have to paint him and figure out hat colors and all that.

Second Test of Juggler

 And here is the video of the final piece completed in July

The Maladjusted Jester

Juggler Continued 5/25/2013

I'm going to try to keep this up as I go. Mostly as a guide to myself. I find that I am forgetting a lot of the details of making these projects (like what formulas I used and what materials. etc.) so if I write everything down here it will hopefully save me time in the long run.

So with that in mind, here are some pictures of what my juggler looks like now:

I used the armature that I started when I was going to make him a statue adding paper clay to the legs and torso. It was pretty unstable at first but dried rigid enough to work on. 

I know what I would like him to look like in my mind, now the hard part is getting the mechanisms to work and preserve the look i want. Ive already redone the skull several times using wireform and plaster paertowels. I figure I will cover the skull will paperclay leaving room for the mechanisms while making the outside look the way i want. By the way, I am using the new paperclay recipe the is posted on ultimate papermache.com, the "super smooth" one and it seems to be working. Ive been going back and forth trying to decide if I should just sculpt his head out of the clay ofr whether I should make a mold and cast it. Im sure if I sculpted it in super sculpey and made a flexible mold i would get a much better more detailed resulted, however, since this is a learning experience I think i will save that for another one and get on with combining the insides and the outsides of this one. I dont want to spend so much time on the details of this one if I cant get it to work.