One of the new props this year came courtesy of the CHB Make&Take in August. Shout out to Mike Yazumbek of Hallucinations Creations for the pneumatic frame that drives the action.
Here is the mechanism:
It doesn’t lift the character very high, but it was enough to inspire me to imagine a crouching figure, leaning on a staff, and using it to stand up.
At first, I figured I’d just use a skeleton as the basis for the character. But then I found this guy at home depot:
His main selling-point is his ultra-posable format — specially, the fully articulated hands (so much better for gripping a staff than sitting with a heat-gun trying to bend a skeleton’s tiny hand to my will).
Just hanging him off the armature was disappointing, though:
The frame is too low to the ground (I could fix that by raising it up). But the tilting of the “neck” on the frame, and the tilting of the head of the zombie just didn’t match — the movement was too far back. I mean, if only the shoulders could match the obvious shoulder placement of the frame… Oh! I have an idea!!!! The lift would have to “wear” the zombie figure…like a suit.
Why Egger? Did you see Men In Black? Do you remember when they interviewed Beatrice (Edgar’s wife)? She didn’t say “Edgar”. She said “Egger” (See it Here). And as I struggled to figure out the best way to put the zombie skeleton on the lift, I realized the lift would have to “wear the zombie suit”. Just like Edgar! Hence: Egger. (Thanks, Beatrice!)
So, “Egger” was born. I needed to tear him down, and then reassemble him around the frame. (Future downside alert: He’s never coming off the frame, so storage will be “fun”. But that’s a November problem.)
So. Many. Screws.
This thing is an impressively complex build. I love the rubberized ball joints. That’s such a good idea. Actually, there are a lot of ball joints – and for my purposes with this prop that raised a small issue. All of the joints were solid, and clickable. Which meant I had to tear everything apart so I could sand all of the gear-ratcheting smooth. I wanted movement, but not clicking. That took a couple hours. There is No simple disassembly with this guy. I was marveling at the engineering. And cursing it too.
Next thing you know, I’m going at it with a hot-knife and a Dremel to cut out any bits of plastic I don’t need, or that would get in the way of building the skeleton body back around the frame. Anything that would cause clicking, or the zombie shell to shift was excised.
The arms were fun. The left arm was disassembled and hollowed out so it followed the bend of the steel rod that defined the armature’s “arm”. I had to cut a couple inches off of it to leave room for the zombie’s hand to move freely.
Now, I realized that the right arm of the armature had to go. If Egger was going to grip a staff to stand, his right arm would need to be completely limp. So, I spent another hour with a hacksaw and the cutting wheel of the Dremel to slowly remove the solid steel bar that represented his right arm. (Is there an easier way? Kindof an anti-weld technique?)
At this point, I wanted to attach the legs. I’d already removed all the ratcheting and clicking. They are now limp, bending freely at the hip, knee, and foot joints. In order to give Egger the ability to stand, the frame would need to be elevated about 12 inches off the ground. I also changed my vision slightly. He’s now sitting (on an inverted bucket) and will stand up from there.
I also didn’t care for the straight up and down motion. That’s not how you stand up from a seated position. So I built an inclined box to hold the armature frame up off the ground, tipped forward. This leans Eggar slightly forward, reinforcing the fact his head is facing down when seated, and allowing it to rotate so he’s facing you when he stands (and he comes slightly closer to the audience as he does so). I had to play with the height of the box. If I made it too tall, his knees would hyper-extend when he stood, which meant they wouldn’t bend again when the frame retracted. (Which was no fun at all as the entire frame and box was launched off the ground by the stiff, backward bent knees).
Dissecting and attaching the body to the frame only took a day. Fine-tuning everything took another. (The only things I didn’t take apart were the skull and the hands. I may open his skull next year – adding the articulation we put into Cal.)
This is when Rebecca entered the fray. Egger wouldn’t be painted this year, but she whipped up a quick witch costume for ‘him’. And Egger the Witch was born.
The last thing we added (this year) was a cackling soundtrack: “Beware! You are entering Demonground.”