hey everybody its norm from the tested and I want to introduce you guys to
Jasper Anderson chasse per welcome to our studio thank you
jasper is an effects artist down in hollywood he's worked for places like
legacy effects Jim Henson's Creature Shop you've worked on films that you out
there may have seen but you also as personal projects she developed and
create creatures for a haunted attraction yeah tell me about what
you've brought here because I see this Raven as a beautiful looking Raven but
this this comes alive isn't it yeah he's asleep right now let's plug him in
because this is an animatronic we definitely do not see enough
animatronics out there and maybe yeah and I see I say maker community because
you not only built this but as you guys can see it's a kit that you've you've
made as well that's right so tell me about the story of this raven and and
how you sculpted and design its movements well so I had made one of
these a few years ago and people started asking me like is there a way that they
can get one and and so I started working out like how do I take something that
was a one-off and make it into a kit that anybody who's interested can pick
up and figure out how to put the pieces together and get you know something that
moves and in your one-off was that much like what this looks like under here or
was it more slapped together more iterative in your in your testing of it
the so the one off was it was a kind of similar in in how the mechanics worked
but like there were a lot of 3d printed parts so that I could kind of you know
test and prototype and a lot of a sort of the chassis structure was just hand
cut but in order to get it simplified down into the kit switched over to
laser-cut parts and and vacuu forms for the head and the body because this is
all self-made you don't outsource things that you know there are sure
off-the-shelf servos and even maybe a control board that can program
but you're designing the laser-cut parts you're doing your own vacuforming and
you've patterned out even the skin the feathering it's all done in like your
apartment yeah and it's it's a tight space but you
can really kind of make anything work if you really want to yeah and the
constraints are analogous to the constraints of the body of this raven
you have here this is one of the kits you've brought up you've done some
assembly of it walk me through the movements and and how many servers you
use and how the servers are actually use yeah so what we've got is there's five
servos and so we're getting five movements out of it there's the jaw
opening the mouth and that's up inside the head there's the hip servo that's
moving the whole body up and down mmm and then this one is controlling the
wings which we haven't attached on this one yet
and then these two the top one is gonna make the head go up and down and the
bottom one makes it go left and right so step one you deciding your movements
that you want it to get yeah right each axis of movement is a servo yep
realizing that you could pack in fact I serve on the head no problem for servos
on the body and in a way to wire them so that the servos work in unison for an
animation yeah and they're all tied to this control board here tell me about
the board and how that works yeah this is a little control board that I found
the company is called Poe a Lewis is the maestro series of boards that they make
and it's a really cool little piece because it can you know it's only so big
but it can hold a sequence of animation on it and the software that they give
you with it is pretty easy to just kind of move the sliders around and keyframe
animate yeah you know you just kind of say like well I want the head to start
here and then about a second later I want it to be up here and you just move
your little sliders over and save it and it all stores it right onto the board
and you can stuff all that inside the bird which is really convenient and then
really what you're doing is kind of choreographing
the different servos so that you have something that reads like an organic
intimation yeah now this open when the body is in this position exact when the
wings are up here plugging this guy in one of the coolest parts I think is the
the head movement because that's two servos you have you tell me about this
design how you're getting two axes of movement even though these servos are on
the same plane yeah it's really simple is that we've got this little universal
joint right here which just lets the head move freely if we had nothing
attached to it and so then with that top servo is there that wire is jogging over
to connect just to the very top of the head mm-hmm and the bottom servo is
actually moving over to connect to the side of the head and so based on that
it's just pushing it in the right spot to kind of allow those two to coordinate
between each other and get it to land anywhere and the the angle in which that
wire is been and the way in which at the contact where the hole is that's all
just fine-tune and calibrated so yeah you can get that kind of nice head tilt
movement built by this kit they I see you got a bunch of parts you get the
wire you have a good jig or designs to get people can bend it to the right
angle same with this for the wings yeah it's it's one of those things where I
was thinking do I need to make a really complicated little structure for the
wings but the reality is that with just the simple little brass piece now you've
got a piece that you can band it so you can decide do I want him to kind of have
his wings tucked up close or is he gonna have them spread out wide and so the
kind of the idea behind the kit was to make sort of a good like base that then
people can modify and find ways to you know add sound add you could add lights
to the eyes you know and this is a board that could
support all that has the pin outs that could write you if you want to wire in
light sound in audio-animatronic you can actually have it screech yeah that is so
so cool how long was this whole development process um it was one of
those things that I kind of sat around with for a couple of years before I
actually figured out the right approach to it and then once I kind of had it all
connect in my head then it then it was only a couple of months worth of
actually testing parts and and prototyping and I imagine must be super
satisfying to have it come alive to go from laser-cut sheets of acrylic slapped
on servos to get those wires finely tuned everything timed right there that
and skinned it so it looks like a burn yeah it really is it's one of those
things that is just really satisfying when you actually make something that
can just kind of be alive on its own yeah and I love the display here you
have it on on the book it would it would be great in you know your any workspace
price not just haunted attraction right yeah thank you so much Jesper for
bringing this kit in for sharing with us your design you have other projects on
your site as well that's right other personal projects yeah I've been doing a
lot of different projection effects and everything from really subtle kind of
background things to talking heads that that look like they're really there you
gotta check out more of those in the future but people can find out about
these kits and even buy kits on your website information is right
below and it's great to meet ya yeah you too
you