Thread: Talking Skull owners, i need to ask you some questions

Tweet

So lately i have been looking more and more into talking skulls and i'm torn. You see my wallet can very easily afford the cowlacious talking bucky skull with scary terry board for 95.00 (i think). However, after seeing videos of the cowlacious in action i notice that the servo is very loud. Almost too loud for my liking. I then strolled over to skulltronix. I'm gonna be honest, 1200 for a talking skull is just insane. Sure the motions are going to be smoother and it may be a better product in the end, the point is I am not opening up a theme park. This is just for a home haunt.

Anyways,

My main reason for coming on here is this; are there any talking skulls that are cheapish in price but great quality? Also how loud are the servos in talking bucky skulls? One last thing does anyone know if cowlacious skulls fit on bucky bodies or can you only use the skull by itself?


Thanks,

Nick

From my experience, that is just the nature of servos...at least when used with a bucky skull for jaw movement. From the videos I've seen on here of peoples' 3-axis jobbies it seems to be true for that as well.

I bought a Scary Terry board from Cowlacious a few years ago for use in my talking, Stirring witch. They work great and are pretty adjustable and from what I recall, cheaper than some other options out there. And as far as I know, the skulls in their kits are straight up bucky skulls so they should work with a bucky just fine. You just may need a creative way of mounting it to the body if the skull cap has no hole in it.

Check Graveyardmadness or Skulltech, both were created by members on the forum. The GYM one was started by Halloweenbob and there is a thread on it entitled "my 3-axis in progress". the Skulltech was done by Dr. Moribus . There is also a thread on this, I think it was "3-axis K-mart skull".I believe both sites are listed in the merchant or for sale section of the forum.

I built a 3-axis skull for last season and I was also concerned about the sound of the servos. They are all kind of noisy but the digital servos seem to be quieter and fasters (and more expensive). If you force the movements to be smooth rather than jerky they will also not make as much noise. I also glued some felt inside the skullcap of my skull to absorb some of the sound. At the end of the project with the felt on the inside and latex and a bandana on the outside of the head the noise was really not that noticable.

I would also say that I have experimented with several methods of making the jaw sync to the audio and I was never completely happy with the methods that automatically move the jaw based on the audio signal. You don't realize it until you start working with it but there are so many nuances with the movement of the jaw and to make it look realistic is much harder than you would think. I realize you can use a stereo audio file that has one track as the 'actual' sound that what you hear and the other track specifically to move the jaw but I found that this just as time consuming as programming the movement of the jaw in VSA. And yes, to do it well can be very time consuming but the VSA method was the only way I was able to create the movements exactly how I wanted. So I guess you have to ask yourself what it is you are trying to achieve vs. how much time you are willing to spend before you can decide what is the best route to take.