A familiar ring

Every new animation presents a gaggle of new challenges. It's fun and frustrating devising solutions to the problems. Finally, the eyes cross without interfering with other mechanisms and without noise.

This first photo shows the screen door eyes I attached to the inside side of the eyeballs. Notice that I had to stagger them, one above the other, so that they wouldn't hit each other as they moved. Also notice the dark round pad I placed behind the nose so that the screen doors eyes wouldn't bang against the head when the eyes turn side-to-side. Cords are attached to the screen door eyes so that when the cords are tugged, the eyeballs turn inward and the eyes cross.



This photo shows the plastic spacer I placed on the mouth pulley axle. The spacer turns freely and acts as a pulley for the crossing eyes cord.









The biggest head-scratcher was the lever for the crossing eyes. Basically, I discovered a lever doesn't work. You see, when the eyes are moved left and right, the screen-door eyes move in opposite directions. So the cord attached to the screen door eyes needs slack. If it doesn't have slack, the taut cord would prevent the eyes from moving left and right. And if the crossing eyes cord was attached to a hard lever, the lever would prevent the cords from slacking. So instead of a lever, I resorted to my familiar toy Jerry Mahoney solution. That is, I attached a metal ring to the end of the crossing eyes control. That way, the cord will slacken because the ring hangs freely. The ring can be slipped on the middle finger with plenty of slack and tugged when I want the eyes to cross.

At least, this is my current solution. I tend to refine and alter my methods as I re-think them. New ideas usually come to me as I'm daydreaming during boring meetings.