Xow! at Comic-Con
So things are REALLY ramping up on the uber secret project at Xow! as we shift into high gear to complete it for premier at Comic-Con in San Diego, July 14-17th. Xow! will be launching its new animation software suite 'Xipster Freestyle' at Comic-Con and our project will showcase some of its capabilities.
We realized, in testing the really cool 'Dia de Los Muertos' inspired puppet of our famous main character, that we would be breaking a lot of wire joints while animating.
So the brilliant Sarah Brown came up with a really groovy way to easily replace the wires, while keeping the puppets uniform in size by using interlocking squarestock and a pin system to keep them locked into place.
We realized, in testing the really cool 'Dia de Los Muertos' inspired puppet of our famous main character, that we would be breaking a lot of wire joints while animating.
So the brilliant Sarah Brown came up with a really groovy way to easily replace the wires, while keeping the puppets uniform in size by using interlocking squarestock and a pin system to keep them locked into place.
posted by Tennessee Reid at 7:07 AM
4 Comments:
Whoah, great work on those plug-in 'tures! Many props to Sarah. How about a few more details... you said 'pins'- I'm guessing one screw holds the big squarestock piece, and the other is a set-screw to secure the little one? And the wire is epoxied in?
...What kind of wire? Anyway, looks like a great system.
Yo DarkStrider here is the skinny from Sarah:
Larger interlocking brass square stock is cast into the bone piece.
Each joint is a piece of aluminium wire with black shrinktubing on it. The joint has the smaller interlocking brass square stock epoxied to each side (wire has been scored with a file where it fits into the square stock to help epoxy bite)
Once the joint is interlocked into the bone piece a small hole is drilled through bone and joint where they interlock.
A small pin snugly fits in the drilled hole to hold the interlock in place. (a small drop of 'locktight' red makes sure the pin won't work its way out during animating!)
- In a larger joint the pin would be replaced with a 't' nut and set screw - but these bones and joints were to small to make that practicle.
Thanks! Great stuff!
Shrink tubing eh? That exlains it. I thought you might be using lead wire because it looked so dark.
You two are rockin' the blogosphere... keep it up!
Yeah, those are cotter pins, I got Sarah to explain it for me. Neat idea, really. Sure beats solering nuts.
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