Automata: Making of Moonwalking Scarecrow #1
4Join me in a journey of making. Making something that is really way more complicated than anything I have ever made before, and where there is a not insignificant chance I will completely screw it up. Which should add some suspense anyway.
The original idea was a scarecrow that walks in place and occasionally turns its head to look at you. Well, walking period is a lot more complicated than it looks. Then I decided to make it "moonwalk" instead of walking. Moonwalking is an illusion where your body seems to make all the right motions to be moving forward, but you are actually moving backwards. Complicating this is the fact that the scarecrow is not going to be moving at all, just its feet. It's going to be walking in place.
When a human moonwalks, the person plants one foot with the heel up and toes on the ground while the other foot is flat on the ground. The flat foot moves backwards, the arched foot stays in place.Then the process is repeated with the feet reversed. The brain thinks, "he is stepping out with his toe, he must be moving forward with that foot" but he's not. Moreover, no one normally moves one's feet with the soles flat on the ground, but that is what is happening.
So, applied to my scarecrow, when a foot is thrust forward its sole is going to be flat on the "ground." When it is moving backwards, only its toe is touching the ground and the heel is raised.
Additionally, I want the scarecrow to turn its head to look at the viewer periodically as if to say, "look at me!" In order to do that I will have a very eccentric cam (H1, colored red in the CAD) that only engages with another cam at the height of its rotation. When the main cam (H1) engages the second cam (H2, colored pink in the CAD,) it will cause that cam and ultimately the scarecrow's head to turn. When the main cam passes beyond the height of its rotation, the second cam (H2) will be forced by gravity back to the default position, which is the head facing forwards. This allows a reasonable period of time to pass between head turns.
So this is a seriously ambitious project for me. I have gathered a number of skills from other hobbies and experiments, but I have never put them all together in a project this complicated. Will it be a brilliant success, a horrible failure or somewhere in between? Time will tell, but you can come along for the ride whatever it is!
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