From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mathieu_Ren=E9?= <creaturiste-AT-primus.ca>
To: <puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org>
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:07:55 -0400
Subject: [Puptcrit] Very small hand mechs?


Hi all.

I hope that today I find (or get told of) an efficient way of articulating a 
rod puppet's hands. They're insanely small (puppet is 13 inches high, the 
hands are 1.75" by 0.75", and have to open and close, but thankfully, no 
individual finger movements. So I grouped the four fingers together, and 
make them move on a pivot.

I wanted to do the "animatronic" hand like seen on "Instructable, but they 
don't seem to open up again too well by themselves, and they would be hard 
to finish into anything graceful (porcelain-like smooth hands, preferably).

My hands are skeletons of small but strong wire. They will be covered in 
paper mache strips, very smoothly (on final product, fingers wrapped before 
assembly of hand)
I half-solved it, but the cable (heavy gauge nylon mono filament inside a 
bicycle break tubing) shows outside the hand and I can't hide it without 
killing the movement (pushing-pulling the string opens and closes the group 
of four fingers). I'll try to move the pivot point closer to the wrist, and 
have the cable move freely inside the arm.  Has any of you ever made small 
hands that needed to open and close?

Do you know of very simple, low-tech approaches?

The short rods on this one would preferably be sticking out of the elbows.

Thanks for any pointers, web addresses, etc...
As usual, I can understand much faster by seeing pics or drawings.



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