Animatronic mask

There's always some interesting project going on in our workshop!
This mask is one of the characters in a sci-fi short film that will be shot this summer.

Head of a space diplomat


If everything goes according to plan the film will be submitted to the Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF) 2013 this fall.

R/C LED-dimmer

I built a remote LED-dimmer for this mask, it's controlling the mood of the alien by changing the brightness of his eyes.
The dimmer is built around the 555 timer IC mounted on a simple strip board.
Here it is before mounted in the mask:

The dimmer's potentiometer is hooked up to a servo via a push rod so it can be controlled with a radio control.
      

Here's all the LED's glued to the eye balls just before insertion into their sockets:

Peter (at Gothenburg Prop Makers) makes all the fixtures for the servos and wires in the mask and of course he sculpts and casts the mask.
I do the setup and mixing of the servos in the radio that controls the mask, and sometimes I make some extra blinking stuff or like in this case, a remote LED-dimmer.

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