Thread: Animated Skull Movement Questions

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I thought I would open a new thread rather than put this in an existing one.

Some thought that I have are;

How come everyone seems to focus on animating the skull head movements from inside the skull?

To me these movements seem unnatural as the skull does not pan/tilt like that.

Has anyone thought of external control? Why not animate the spine? make it pan and tilt rather than the head? is it because the servo is the simplest and easiest thing to use and it can only be used inside the skull.

What about the spine, I have seen this on some older Disney props. Animate the neck joints as that's what really moves when we tilt our heads. Or is the reason that its just much more complicated (and more expensive)?

Has anyone tried animating the neck?

Or is it a natural evolution of the home haunters experience......


I was thinking like threading Electrical BX wire shield (which bends like a neck) through hollowed out neck bones (this way one can also place wires through it) and then using a 3 wire system on the peripheral of the bones that would tighten to pull the neck in the direction required. or

out the wires farther out like real muscles and control them with servos or pneumatics and cover the wires with some decayed "soft tissue"

I considered something like this.

Actually I figured I would mount the skull on a gimbal and actuate it from down below.

As far as actually recreating real natural movement?

I am trying to figure out how you can do it.

I had a real crazy idea some time back. Use electromagnets.

Each vertebrae would have four small electromagnets. The facing surface on the adjoining vertebrae would have a small rubber magnet. The electromagnets would normally be all set with opposing pole energised. This would keep the neck straight due to the repel rule. When you want the neck to move, on the side you want to compress you change the polarity on these magnets. You could even do it in sequence so it would look natural.

Rotation is the hard part.. Likely will have to live with something occuring at the base, or inside the skull. Although the spinus process area might provide a means to achieve rotation via my crazy magnet idea. Lot of wires. For a fully functional neck with six vertebrae would be 42 wires using a common ground. I figure you could use small speaker wire, so bundle would be about 1/2 inch or so. Now the controller is another story.

I thought about cables as well. Just not sure if you pull up through openings in the vertebrae it will work.

The servos are mounted inside the skull to simply hide the servos. Most people mount the skulls on Bucky skeletons where hiding mechs is virtually impossible given you can see every bone. Servos are used because they are easy to control with VSA, a visual software that syncs audio to servo motion.

I think they look great just the way they are. The skull tilting adds a nice "creepy" factor. It's Halloween.....It's SUPPOSE to be unnatural.

Hmmm...
I kinda like the concept of torso-mounted servos. The biggest obstacle would seem to be access to the chest cavity, but that could be solved by a little cutting and hingeing of the rib cage. If the Bucky is wearing any clothes (Grim Reaper, partially clothed corpse/zombie, barbershop quartet singer) then the surgery would not be noticeable. The idea of having latex or other stretchy covering over the cable sheaths to simulate tendons sounds good, too. One other thing - a "nodding" motion could be achieved by mounting on a gimbal (per spinman's suggestion) and using elastic or rubber bands to pull the skull in one direction. This would increase the load on the servo a bit, but you now have room for larger motors. Tilt could be done the same way, with a longer servo horn to increase the range of motion. Rotation would probably still be done via an inside-the-skull servo. I'd use Nitinol wire for the cables. Very flexible and durable, and not too expensive.
Damn...another challenge.

It would be pretty cool if the only thing you had to try to squeeze inside the skull were a few bicycle brake cables. It would cost a little more, but you could upgrade the servos to the quieter metal-geared servos. You would have to do a lot more tweaking with the synchronization, I assume.

I think controlling the skull externally is very doable. I plan on starting a small test project to make a simple articulated neck. Rotation is the tough one.

That being said, I think a servo or actuator of some sort will need to remain in the skull. This goes for the eyes if animated as well.

To control the nod and tilt function, I think it can be done from below with cables. As far as rotation, there is not reason the servo's could not be mounted on a rotating platform.

hey, heY, hEY, HEY! Slow down! I am still trying to get enough courge to attempt the 3 axis skull. You guys are out of control. The 2009 Halloween videos are going to be sick! Looking forward to this thread progressing.

I just assumed that the servos were placed in side the skull because of the steel bar that runs through the spine. If you take that out your skeleton will slump over, unless of course you have something stronger then servos controlling it. (Buckys are very heavy and place alot of demand on the servos... this is why when placing the servo plate on the rod, you want to get the center of gravity just right.

I have plenty of the skulls Doc used. I need neck vertebrae. I would prefer to not buy an entire bucky.

Anyone have any ideas?