Or I could observe some guy named Brandon do it on YouTube for free.

These are the controls I used to puppeteer the face! My right hand pulled on the black cable that is kind of hard to see here… it’s the one that’s taped to the dowel just to the leftmost corner of the box.

The cigar box with the square pegs was controlling the direction of the eyebrows and the eyes (left and right, respectively), which I manipulated with my left hand kind of on all of the levers at once.

I had to put my foot down on the mouth cable to keep it from untaping itself from the table when I yanked on it. In all honestly, this is far from a super great control scheme, but I learned so much by building this that I’m excited to take on the next challenge!

The webcam showed a view kind of like this one. It was blurry, but I could recognize familiar faces. Being able to see outside gave the lion the opportunity to make comments about peoples’ appearance and behaviour, which was startling, as everyone was expecting a pre-programmed robot!

Here’s the door knocker from the inside. All of the mechanical parts you see here were improvised a week before the show, when I finally gave up on servo control. They performed admirably, but the motions of the face lacked a certain range and were difficult to control. This calls for a more sophisticated solution in the future. All in all, not bad for a hack-job, but nowhere near where I wanted it to be!

There are four cables here. The three coming in from the top control the left eyebrow, mouth, and right eyebrow respectively. The diagonal line controls the direction of the eyeballs via rods inserted through the black clips, and the linear motion of the cables is turned into a rotational motion for the eyebrows via the two red wheels you see. The mouth is spring-loaded, allowing it to snap shut when I release the mouth cable on the control side.

You can see the speakers here, a legacy from an earlier plan to have all of the mechanics hidden within the hollow door. With the door now permanently locked, that wasn’t necessary!

You can also see, in the left eye, the hacked webcam I used to see out with the door closed.

Here’s the setup inside! I operated the puppet from on top of this table here. The inside mechanisms were forced together at the last minute out of desperation, since my electronics were pooping out. Therefore: all of that duct tape. I was continuously fixing stuff and improving my fixtures as the weekend went on.

The speakers I had mounted on the door didn’t perform up to task when in the field. Too much feedback, not loud enough… This is always the problem with site-specific audio components! Luckily my friend Charlotte helped me out with this karaoke set, which performed really well! It breaks the immersion somewhat, and a few people found it distracting, though overall it was an adequate solution.

Here’s a closeup showing the details of the sculpture. The lion had to look stylized enough to be a bronze cast, but detailed enough to be plausibly alive! It was painted with PAX first with a layer of bronze, then with a thin layer of bone black with a bit of red tint and stippled with a sponge for a patina effect. Then the whole thing was given a glossy clear coat to protect the paint job. Overall, the effect was quite convincing! People would touch it and be amazed that it wasn’t made of metal.

The advantage of the placement is clear when you walk to the end of the hallway! Most of the people who interacted with the lion came from this direction. In fact, this particular line of sight is what sold me on this space!

Here’s a photo from the grad show on Sunday. Showing in the “computer hallway” was a bit weird, but being out of the way made for more intimate reactions.