Project 3 - Reflective Statement

In this project, there we're some expectations and predictions which I thought during the start. I was expecting that I would gain more knowledge on mechanism in relation with modeling and physical aspects of an animatronic. My prediction in this project is that this project will have a deeper meaning in terms of putting your ideas into the character and attain a life form in the film. I wanted to become focus on my programming as well since I'm doing an all through out programming paper electives the whole year. I was fond of doing and making things become alive and move because it felt like I'm really creating an artificial life form. In the end of the process I kind of achieved what I was expecting and thought of improving myself in terms of physics so that making an animatronic alive would be more realistic. I love how how the group went well. We came together as a group and help each other out. When someone got stuck in their work, we all come and help so we could move on to the next task. I myself carried out like a leader but not to the point that I just point out what to do. I made a lot of decision for them even on the hard times because they knew I can act out fast when things go wrong and the time is already running out. I thanked the group for giving their best out in this project and I hope can work again with them in the future.

Project 3 - Conceptual Statement

We've done a structured brainstorming from the start where we did research from creatures that we had liked in the beginning. The idea was make an animatronic tentacle which it will bend from side to another. I like the idea of how it bends and the physical motion on how it works on the movies. During our development on our concept, we did a process where as we build the animatronic creature, the story also being made at the same time. Likewise it's a building towards the top. Since we were told about putting a story and character personality on it rather than the opposite of putting the story as it is from the animatronic creature being built upon every moment. I think it is more appropriate to do that kind of approach since a character creature should consider it's personality in order to decide what's going to be the movement of the animatronic creature. As the research came to the focal point, I told the group that we should do an animatronic plant. It would be the same from a moving tentacle and we could put a character into it which it would interact to human senses or the biological environment. On researching the movement of the tentacle, I saw some tutorials on how they did the bending of the tentacle. One good process if to make a fishing rod where the pulley pulls the wire connected to the skeleton of a tentacle where it's going to bend its body when the wires are getting pulled by the pulley. Step Motor is the most appropriate use for controlling the wires rotating clockwise and counter-clockwise. In terms of the character we also decided to make it more friendlier, getting out of the flower eating monster concept cliche. So the movement would be subtle and gentle rather than aggressive and mad. At all the cost we're going to buy all the stuff in order to get the animatronic plant creature to get it working.

Project 3 - Film!

Withered Season from John Dexter Abaya on Vimeo.

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 10)

I just finished the editing so the only thing left is to make DVD case. One bad news, the motor got lost during the clean up last friday. I just don't know how we're going to be able to demonstrate it during the presentation. The motor is one of the key for making the animatronic work. We can't use the small servo because it wouldn't hold up enough torque to pull and bend the animatronic. Probably what we could just do is if in case we have to demonstrate it, we're just have to do it manually. Exhibition is coming up as well so we definitely have no time for replacing the stepper motors. I still have to think upon the looks and design of our exhibition since that part is also going to be assessed. I'm also just waiting for Amos to refine the paper works (Backstory, Character Profile, Storyboard) so we could put it on our exhibition. It is sad that we can't make the animatronic works but I hope in this blog it will explain it well enough on what happened for our project.

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 9)

The unfortunate event happened when I didn't find my battery charger and divine can't make it today for the filming. I had to think of another person who could do the role for our film and the only person available would be my girlfriend. She can do the film but after she finished her work which the filming would take place during the night. What I did is shoot all the things together and tweak it in the editing. We were all set in the evening including the plant creature and so we went through my girlfriend's place to shoot. I also thought of re doing the shots from the storyboard because we won't be able to shoot in the daylight anymore. In the end we we're able to film everything and did a good job on controlling the animatronic plant which tells a humanistic personality.

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 8)

Today is the filming day and we chose divine as our actress for our film. Her roles is to be the little sister of the family who have a great compassion with her brother. We shoot during the night because I wanted the film to have an emotional scene and the lighting should be dim lighted. The setting would be in a bedroom where she will go inside with an angered and saddened emotion. Since I'm the one doing the editing, I just did the directing so I could choose the kind of shots that we need. In the storyboard that Amos did I did some refinement in order to have some connections between the scenes so the audience wouldn't be confused on what's happening. Tomorrow we will shoot in the daylight where they will have a flashback with the character of the brother who died after. The good thing was I was able to use my mom's DSLR camera to have a good quality film but unfortunately the battery died and I can't find the battery charger. If I don't have the camera by tomorrow, I might just use the handycam instead although the quality wouldn't be as good as the DSLR camera.

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 7)

I worked a lot for the stepper motor today. I borrowed Tom's step motor and tried it working with the H Bridge that I bought from TradeMe. I researched on making the step motor work and found lots of tutorials on it. I found a neat instructions on plugging the H bridge to the Arduino and the stepper motor. After the wires are connected all together, I tried to run it with the code that I've found and it turns out the motor is only vibrating. The knob isn't working at all. I tried several codes to work on it even the example from the Arduino which is the MotorKnob and nothing made any difference. I tried to contact Tom and he gave me some advice on how to work it. Several attempts has been done and nothing follows up with what it suppose to do. I got some readings from the H bridge when I ran the code from the Arduino and I my thoughts is that the step motor doesn't have enough power to run the knob. One problem that I've found with the help from Tom, is the 5V socket is not wired. The H bridge needs a 5V from the Arduino and the ground from the Arduino should be wired to the H Bridge as well. Tom came to studio and helped me on solving the problem. He tried a lot of trial and error and in the last moment, we run the code at the rate speed of 5 and the knob turns but really slow. We tried the strength of the knob and it does kind of turn. In the end I'm considering if we're still going to use these motors since it's not working as much as I wanted.

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 6)

Today we're wondering about how to do our stuff for our project that will would be able to stable our animatronic creature. We wanted to show to maggie that our character is solid and has a personality but at the same time have it's good functionality in terms of mechanism. I had something to deal with my other paper during this week so I haven't got much time to do on doing the arduino stuff but I already had it planned out on what it needs to be done. 

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 5)

I encountered a lot of problems today that we would be dealing if we continue on using the wrong materials. We cut the hard wood that we had yesterday in some circle sections from biggest to smallest. After we had cut all of it, we compiled all the wood that we cut and realize that it's going to be heavy in terms of the motor that I was thinking we will use. I talked to Sam (3rd year student) whose good on building mechanical stuff and he also thought that as well. We should have gone for a plywood or an acrylic material so that the cable wires can hold it together. He's not sure if those cable wires can hold the hard wood which is really too thick and heavy that it would need a much thicker wire to be able to stand. One thing he suggested for the wire is either we could use a hose for holding the wooden plates and put marbles on the hose. Marbles would be flexible enough to bend since it's rolling inside. Another thing he thinks it would be the best is to make a thread out of a cable wire and make it thicker. He also suggested another that it might work, a motor that sticks on an oval shape structure and there's going to be a lever that would stick on another shape structure near the base of the tentacle. It's like a train wheel that's going up and down. But after I showed him what I saw from the youtube where they use motors as a pulley, he thinks that method would be better for us since we want something that is more controllable. 

In terms of motion design, I bought a dc motor in surplustronics today which is a big one and have high torque speed. 

At first I was doubting if the motor would be too much as the speed is really fast and it would not be a good motion for the animatronic tentacle plant to execute. Then another realization came to me. A dc motor can only change it's direction and speed but not the momentum. Then I thought of using a stepper motor. Stepper motors are more efficient when it comes to control. I saw some video that using a stepper motor is more efficient and it has quite controllable rather than a dc motor. 

I ask Tom Drake (2nd year) if he has some stepper motor and he does have one but he doesn't suggest to use it for what we are making. It might not handle enough strength to pull some strings in the pulley since he already had some experience on using it. He suggested to use a big servo which can handle 5 kg's of weight and it's more efficient in coding. Another option that he told me is a gear motor that can handle the same weight of the big servo motor. But it would need an h-bridge to handle it and it would cost a lot for those materials. As for me as long as we have the correct materials to use even if it's expensive, it would be fine to spend a lot since it's a good investment for the project. One last thing that he told me that we could use as a support material, a spring wire in the middle section of the tentacle plant. It is flexible and it could help a lot on supporting the frame when it's bending

I guess I have a lot of options to go when it comes to building it but it would matter in the end for the story and the character that we're going to make and it could be more easier and efficient to build it than I think if we could agree on the motion of the character that it suppose to do.

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 4)

We talked to James about our project and how we will make it and he suggested we should put foam on every gap section of the animatronic tentacle so it wouldn't torn much by the force when it's being pulled by the pulley. Afterwards we went to the 3D labs to look for a material that we're going to use as the skeleton of our plant animatronic. But due to the busy area in 3D labs we were able to go at 3:00pm which we don't have much time left to gather some materials and cut the skeleton section for our animatronic tentacle plant. The guys in 3D labs told us they have acrylic which is 6 mm thick and it should be enough for us to use for our project. Since we don't have much time we just went on looking for a scrap wood. We found a hard wood which is 16 mm thick. It is really heavy but we decided to use and cut it in some circle portions by tomorrow. We also talked about getting some wires in any hardware stores so we could build it till the end of this week. In other aspects, the motion design will be made by tomorrow. I'm planning on buying the motors and look upon some codes for controlling the direction and speed by a potentiometer. 

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 3)

We have initialize our concept and structured it to the point where we are now settled. We told maggie about our project. The concept would be a animatronic tentacle which is based from a plant that's going to sense its time if it's day or night. During the night the plant would only move rather in daylight. We also told her that we're going to build the story as it is when we build the animatronic plant. The story will be based on a alien scientific concept where scientist will find it in a park. They will study it and have some video recordings of the plant on how it grows in Earth. After we told everything on our concept, she had a thought of a cliche movie that's similar to our story. She told us not to go into that path and we should critically think about the character of the subject. I already assumed that feedback since I know that we don't have a purpose on what we were doing for our character. We should think about how the character feels, what it thinks and how it reacts, then we could build the story out from it.  But rather than a short story, I suggested to the group that we should make a commercial kind of thing since we only have 60 seconds time limit for the video. After the discussion she thinks that we have a solid character which we need to think about it's personality to be based upon the story. 

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 2)

Today I went on testing and refreshing my memory on arduino and have a test run on dc motor. I have a research about the function of animatronic tentacle and base from what I saw, motors will probably do the thing when it comes to power. But the thing for using motor is that I don't know if there's any controller that could control the speed and rotation of the motor in order to control the animatronic tentacle. I also search about the mechanics of the pulling strings for the tentacle. Here's what I've found

It looks like strings are being pulled and the whole structure will also affect on it which will curve or move in other direction since it is attached to the strings. Another thing that I was wondering about if the arduino can handle two motors at the same time. Tim said about using an H-bridge, and here's another video that I found that it is possible to run two motors in arduino by using a H-bridge

Since this is possible I've tried testing again my arduino to the motor that tim gave me. It's only a mere to refresh my memory in arduino. I guess I would make a circuit board for this when it comes to the building stage. I would also need an H-bridge to put on the circuit board as well. It's either I buy the kit or make one myself. Either way I would need it as much as possible. 

Project 3 - Uncanny (Day 1)

On this day I went through on looking some of the videos on how they did the tentacle arms. What I saw is some wires sticking with the circle bearing which holds the wires down. Some controls it with a servo consecutive to the arduino.

Some of it was also controlled by motors

I prefer doing the motor controlled one since it has more stability and it has more control to it. The motor is pulling up and down the 4 pulley which makes the tail looks like real. The motor also has more  torque and power rather than a servo. 

In this video, if you would look on the description he said about the servo not having enough power to move the tongue of the creature. It's effective but not smooth enough.

Project 3 - Uncanny

We were given the main brief and the last project for the 2nd semester. The project is to do an animatronic character that will be filmed for 60 seconds and has a storyline on it. Our group consists of Me, Tim and Amos. My role for this is to develop the motion of the character and program it. First thing I would do for this project is to decide the movement of the character that we would make. I think that this would be one of the functions that's need to focus on because this would be also one of the results that's going to develop the character. When we talked about making the character Tim had something in his mind about the character of what we're going to make. He tells about a worm like creature or a tentacle monster which wiggles and moves in a dangerous manner. However I thought about researching it in other materials so we could have something that could use as a reference for our character. I went to the library and look upon weird creatures or anything that would be likely the same as what Tim had thought about. I immediately went to the film section and browse on anything about character development. During my search, I thought about tentacles as like plant like creatures. I went to the plant section of the library but nothing much about I could use. Then I went back to the film section and found a book which is "The Art of Avatar".  I looked on it and found some art pictures of the creatures in the film Avatar. At some point I found this page where there's some pictures of the plants that was made in the film. I immediately borrow it and showed it to the group. They like the idea of the plant like creature and so we decided to make a plant creature that moves and will probably have senses like a human does. 

Project 3 - Initial Response to the Brief

This project had got me excited about a new kind of process that we're about to make. It had me thinking about new kind of stuff that I would never imagined. Robots, talking animals, a clone of yourself and a lot more. This is the best situation where you attempt to put your creativity on the line and become more aggressive and experimental about it. The way I see it, the project wasn't suppose to do a whole functional animatronic but rather just a part of it's body where it's going to relate to the film. I also thought of this project as going for an imaginative ride of excitement. It's totally going to be a meaningful thought for the project that's going to be made. It like putting your soul into the body of an animatronic and have itself become a humanistic character. Supporting a storyline it will become more part of the social environment and have itself an importance in the world as it will have something to tell us in a film, more or less a lesson. The brief also tells about how technology also becoming senses of a human where it can also feel and be sensitive to the surroundings. All of this aspects will be combined into one short film where it's going to be put as a part of the showcase in the exhibit on the last day of assessment. One thing for sure, this is not just about the personality and meaningful character of the animatronic but the mechanism of how does it work should be considered as well. From the last two exercise that we had, I guess it all comes together in the end where we going to have our own product that's going to be a life form from the process and hard work that's going to be done by ourselves.