Tuesday 26 July 2011

Old head

Found this in the loft - an amusing day's chiselling once upon a time
Carved wooden head with glass eyes

Sunday 24 July 2011

Freaky wild creatures by Theo Jansen

These are just beautiful.
Wind-powered, and pretty marvelous

Venyosa walk 2 from Strandbeest on Vimeo.

Rhinoceros from Strandbeest on Vimeo.

Monday 18 July 2011

More or less finished automata head

This shows the head with both halves togetherAutomata head
The head actually comes apart like an easter egg
Automata head opened out
This starts like this...
Automata heads: model and copy
Then occurs some most enjoyable hacking and shaping with various power and hand tools:


Power planer
Smoothing out automata head
Hand saw
Saw carving automata head
But best of all the solid tungsten carbide rotary rasps in a router with its cage taken off, and replaced with a drill handle. This is not good for the lungs or the tips of fingers if one is not careful
Router carving automata head

Recreating the automata head from MDF templates

Having cut out the layers of the head, the middles were cut out so tha when they were stuck back together, they would have a convenient void inside for putting things in


Automata head slices
Next these were glued back together. This was done in two parts. The front (face) section was recreated from the foremost 4 layers, and the rest of the head (back) from the rest of the layers:
Glueing automata head together


This shows the stepped effect of the recreated head. This could be improved by using much thinner layers, for example ceiling tiles.
Automata heads: model and copy

Sunday 10 July 2011

Cutting out slices of head

Taken apart the carved head feels like some 19th century medical experiment.
Slices through the head of polystyrene model
The slices were fitted onto some MDF and marked outSlices through a carved polystyrene head
The transferred patterns were then cut from MDF
Cutting out head layers
The outline only slices next to the original carved slicesCarved head layers recreated in MDF

Friday 8 July 2011

Taking apart the laminated head...

Having carved the head, it's quite interesting to see the layers, as they come apart, especially the fact that almost all the real attention-grabbing detail is in the first 2 layers...

Deconstructing a carved laminated head
Deconstructing a carved laminated head

Here you can really see it...

Deconstructing a carved laminated head

Thursday 7 July 2011

Carving a prototype head in polystyrene

Starting to get there. From poly sheet to cuboid laminated block to carved head...
Automata prototype

Automata prototype #4
Automata prototype #4
Automata prototype #4