Thread: Caged gorilla

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Hi,

We've had an unused 6 foot tall, 4 foot wide & 2 foot deep metal safe cage somewhere lost in storage for a few years & we've decided to try to put it to use this year. It's made of pretty strong meshlike metal.
We have a gorilla suit, basic PVC human frame already made and wiper motor.
The top of the cage and back of the cage are solid metal so we can mount from those points easily.
Any ideas how to suspend, hang, mount or position the PVC frame in the cage so that a wiper motor can make it move? We want the gorilla to appear to shake...to look alive.
Any ideas how to mount and link and connect the motor to the PVC frame? To the bottom of the cage....back of the cage...linkage?

Thanks for any thoughts or direction,
Kevin.

I have seen this effect done with pneumatics but i'm not sure if a wiper motor will do the trick here. The one i saw was also a cage butit was made out of pvc. The front of the cage was hooked down at the bottom leading edge and the pneumatic cylinder pushed from the back, causing the gorilla to push against the cage leaning it forward towards the audience. A nice simple controller that i think would work great for this would be the animation meastro
you can see exactly how it will operate when you program it, it is very easy to use. I am currently building a dropping spider prop that will be using the meastro. Check it out here Haunted Enterprises - Haunted Village - Home of the Last Ride

scroll down it is towards the bottom of the page.

The back of cage to front of cage would be an awesome effect! We're looking for something a little less startling... just a side-to-side motion inside the cage. I don't think the wiper motor can handle too much weight so I need some help figuring out how to mount the gorilla pvc frame ....maybe suspend it?.....and how to make the gorilla seem to 'shake' with the wiper motor, if possible. Thanks!

How about with chains?