Thread: Re-working my FCG

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I built an FCG several years ago and decided to make some improvements to both the ghost itself and the display. This is what I started with. You'll probably notice several potential improvements right away.

Here's a link to a video of the original...not too bad.
http://www.brianredmond.net/halloween/ghost.wmv

I wanted the final ghost to be a little scarier so the plain wig form would have to go.

Bucky skulls are heavy and I'm an x-ray tech so my anatomy knowledge is pretty good so I decided to just carve out a skull from the existing head. A Dremmel is a project-builder's best friend (or at least in the top 3). I drew out approximately where I wanted to carve right on the old head and fired up the Dremmel. About 30 minutes (and a lot of dust) later, here's what I came up with. I left the back of the neck intact because the hole for the mounting wire runs through it.



I started by carving around the shape of the jaw because I may eventually have the jaw moving. It ended up being pretty easy to separate it from the rest of the head. A little carving on the piece and I had a pretty good mandible.


More to come...

Next, I lined up the jaw on the head, poked a wire through the top of the jaw and marked where it hit the skull. I took a 1/8 inch metal rod and pushed it through what would be the back of the pallete, then marked the point on the other side of the mandible. With the holes all aligned, I took out the rod and re-installed it through the mandible this time. This can now be driven with a servo to be mounted inside the cranium.

Next, it needed teeth. I'm not going so much for realism as effect, so although the teeth look big and there are only a few, they'll look great in the final prop. I just used small chunks of the carved out styrofoam and pushed a small wire into them then into the appropriate spot on the skull or jaw. You can also see that I've cut off the top of the head at this point to hollow it out a bit. It looks really good.

Brilliant!! Why didn't I think of that. Can't wait to see how creepy it is when your done.

VERY COOL! Taking FCG to a new level. More, more , more!

Thanks for the comments. This project is becoming quite fun...big plans ahead. Bear with me between posts. I will keep them fairly regular.

The next step is important for two reasons. I needed to paint the skull with latex paint. Firstly because I will soon be poking several holes in various spots for wires, and the paint will keep the styrofoam from "chaffing" too much. Also because in the end, I plan on spray painting it with fluorescent paint which would otherwise dissolve the styrofoam. Wal-mart (and most other places) have paint that was not mixed to the correct color for a customer, or ended up not needed for some reason which they discount. I found a pale grey which was the perfect color and the whole gallon was only $7. I will soon put a second coat on it, but I only needed one for now. I let it dry overnight and moved on.

Probably the hardest part of the whole project is the control wire for the jaw. I simply used a large paperclip which I straightened out and tested various angles and locations. The best seems to be mid-way up one side of the jaw. I poked the wire up through the mouth into the now hollow cranium. It took several different bends to get it to work just right, but in the end it was fine. It's kind of hard to see in the picture so I circled it in red.

It will hook to a micro servo in the skull which I will be controlling with an ATMEGA 168 MCU (also for pulsing eyes and some hidden UV LEDs to be described later). Here's a short video of the wire being hand operated. (By the way, anyone know how to actually put the video in the post?)
http://www.brianredmond.net/fcgpics/jaw.mpg

I spent the last few days working on the code for controlling the jaw servo and green pulsing eyes with a microcontroller. I'm happy to say I got it working with a minimum of glitches. For anyone who's interested, the code (in C) can be found here. http://www.brianredmond.net/fcgpics/fcg01.txt
And here is the schematic:

More pics to come soon...

I had some 1 inch wide aluminum stock on-hand so I cut a piece and shaped it with the Dremmel to mount the servo. I'll be adding a longer piece attached at a right angle and cutting into the inside of the cranium for stability.

The wires in the picture are for the eyes and some UV LEDs I'll be adding under each cheekbone and in the bottom opening of the neck. They'll provide some continuous fluorescence to the head and upper body so it doesn't fade as it moves away from the top mounted fluorescent UV fixture.

I found a site with a great idea for the eyes, but I can't seem to remember where. Anyway, instead of obnoxious LEDs staring at you from the eyes, the LEDs are mounted in the top front of the socket and bent to face the back. Just the very tips are taped off and the sockets and un-masked LEDs are painted flat black with a quick spray of gloss over the top. That way, the LEDs aren't over powering and are just reflected from the back of the sockets. I went with green to break up the monotony of the blue/violet from the UV (and I think red is too harsh and distracting). These will be pulsing once the circuit board is finished and installed.


Here's a video of the servo in action: http://www.brianredmond.net/fcgpics/servo01.mpg

Brilliant idea with the wig head! One thing that I've been planning on with my ghost for an Axeworthy rig is using the uranium (a.k.a. Vaseline Glass) marbles in the eyes. Ofc, that would necessitate using UV led's being that it's UV reactive. However, by far, you'll find far more uranium glass in green. So it may work out in your favor. Back lighting uranium marbles looks far more realistic to me, imho.

There are other colors such as blue & red as well. But they are much harder to find in a solid singular colored piece of glass.

I actually looked into doped marbles for eyes, but wanted to keep it a little simpler for the FCG. I may go that route in another project.