After building my first pirate animatronic a couple years ago with my brother, which I have named "The Helmsman", I wanted to take a stab at a much more complex build for a very dynamic pirate character: Davy Jones. I am starting on this goal of recreating some of the famous scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies which feature Davy Jones by beginning to prototype his tentacle beard. The following details my design iterations, research, ideas, questions, any relevant files, etc. for this animatronic tentacle beard I hope to bring to life!
@jacol_3006 Well done and appreciate the writeup! Feel free to add some more closeup photos of the rig. Do you plan to wear it (cosplay perhaps?) and if so, does it seem heavy?
@cbenson Thank you so much ! Good call. I went back and added a link in Step 2 showing some closeup photos of the rig.
My idea here is to be able to implement this design onto a Davy Jones character head which would be part of a stand-alone animatronic figure. I did not get an exact weight of each tentacle as I bolted down the tentacles to the rig before adding the extension springs as cable conduit. My rough estimate is around three pounds for each tentacle, though (which might be a little on the heavy side for an estimate).
I do not plan on using these tentacles for cosplay, but I think this design could be modified to make room for a head to fit inside. I am thinking if the cables are routed a certain way in the mechanism, then one servo motor could actually cause the tentacle to bend into a s-curve shape without needing to dedicate multiple servos to three different stages. Let me know if I am not making sense I will try to re-explain.
Another option would be to figure out how to move around all these servos, which can be done, to allow a head to fit inside. The costume might become bulky or might need to take a very clever shape. I am speculating on this one because I believe it could be done. I do not, however, have a lot of experience designing costumes.
A stand-alone can work well. I wonder if there are any masks you could use as a basis for a head to save a lot of time on a sculpture (and get as close to the real thing as possible)?
Using one servo to actuate multiple tentacles, and placing the servo elsewhere (not all in the head) is certainly good.
You bring up another great point. I would like to learn how to do some basic sculpting and modeling maybe for making a silicone or rubber latex tentacle skin, but I would love to find a mask that would work for Davy’s head. I have seen on youtube and also on Etsy some extremely realistic and convincing masks for Davy Jones. This is a great idea and is feasible for the future of this project.
I will continue posting updates in this series as I make more mechanisms for both the tentacles and other components of the character head. Thank you for these suggestions.
Another approach is to reach out to someone who has already created a latex mask which you like and see if you can work something out so they can create another one for you (given that they likely still have a mold). Don’t know if a mask will fit all heads though.
I really appreciate that @jeffro, thank you so much. I was trying to see if I could make these tentacles as lifelike as possible. Of course, I still see room for improvement so any suggestions or anything else are always welcome. I will keep posting updates as I continue this project. Hope you are doing well and staying safe!
