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Halloween 2009


CLD Kevin

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I am new to all of this so sorry if this is a basic question.

Can someone explain how they are getting the mouth movements so fluid? I read on another page about a single box fade but could use a little more explaination.

Here is a down and dirty mock up I did today just to get an idea.......and I do not think mini's is the way to go....PHEW!!!

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johnm160 wrote:

I am new to all of this so sorry if this is a basic question.

Can someone explain how they are getting the mouth movements so fluid? I read on another page about a single box fade but could use a little more explaination.

Here is a down and dirty mock up I did today just to get an idea.......and I do not think mini's is the way to go....PHEW!!!






John,

Great work! Actually, I think mini lights will work if that's what you used to create that face. I think the smoothness comes from being consistant with the forming of the words and trying to always come back to a common smile. Go back to some of crackers posts on how he did the words. Search youtube for "halloween raw" and you'll find his vids. I single stepped through some frames to see how he did his words. I haven't perfected the fades yet either. Are you using incondecent or LED lights? I would think the LED's would turn off too fast and may need the fade while the incondecent would fade slightly on their own.
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boborino wrote:

Great work! Actually, I think mini lights will work if that's what you used to create that face. I think the smoothness comes from being consistant with the forming of the words and trying to always come back to a common smile. Go back to some of crackers posts on how he did the words. Search youtube for "halloween raw" and you'll find his vids. I single stepped through some frames to see how he did his words. I haven't perfected the fades yet either. Are you using incondecent or LED lights? I would think the LED's would turn off too fast and may need the fade while the incondecent would fade slightly on their own.


Thanks, my plan was to make a quick model to get the feel of....Turns out I spent a couple of hours laying it out and poking holes, I did not pay attention to light count or spacing....and its all in CARDBOARD....LOL. So this for sure will not be a finished product. I would need huge sheets of coroplast to do it with mini's and they would catch lots of wind, I am not sure how else I could mount mini's to a frame to form the faces.

I do plan on going thru Crackers vids, his mouth movements are amazing, perfectly sync'd with smooth transitions. I just don't have the time to reverse engineer it for this year I am actually still assembling controllers.



-John
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Yeah John, I still have 2 controllers I need to build that I bought during the summer sale too. I would think you could use the same technique that we are using with rope light. Just make a frame out of PVC, cover it with that plastic fencing with squares that are about 1/2 inch apart, then wire tie the lights to the fencing.

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I looked at the hexagon and square-spaced plastic fencing, but as it's black, and my stucco walls are white-ish, I went with the thin-can't-see-it-from-15'-away metal fencing. I used the alum/steel 2"x3" cow fencing, was a 48" x 50' roll for.. $37, from HD.. easily gave me one 6x6' and three 4x4' frame coverage.

http://www.homedepot.com/Outdoors-Fencing-Wire/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xg6Zbb00/R-100066886/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

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I think the spacing is a bit large to try to mount mini's to, the 1/2 spacing sounded good but I think the amount of wire ties to mount each mini may exceed the cost of getting rope lights. :)

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I bought orange rope light from CDI, $60 for 150', and 24 extra plugs, came to abt $173 for everything, shipped, but it was heavy.. figure on $55-$60/roll, and abt $20 to ship.. PlanetChristmas has a page how to make your own plugs for each rope light section, 'wish I saw it before buying the plug packs.

http://planetchristmas.com/RopeLight.htm

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johnm160 wrote:

I think the spacing is a bit large to try to mount mini's to, the 1/2 spacing sounded good but I think the amount of wire ties to mount each mini may exceed the cost of getting rope lights. :P

I bought a back of 1000 8" wire ties and have gone through about 3/4 of them on my 4 faces. I used the larger holed chicken wire for my 4ft faces, because they were 2 ft wide, so I layed two strips next to each other to fit. The 6ft face I used the black plastic because it was 3ft wide. Again I layed two strips next to each other. Some of the runs were too long and didn't end on an exact 18" section so I used aluminum tape (the kind used to seal A/C vents) to cover the extra. (see picture. It also shows the plastic fencing too).

Attached files 213641=11905-silvertape.jpg

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TJ Hvasta wrote:

I bought orange rope light from CDI, $60 for 150', and 24 extra plugs, came to abt $173 for everything, shipped, but it was heavy.. figure on $55-$60/roll, and abt $20 to ship.. PlanetChristmas has a page how to make your own plugs for each rope light section, 'wish I saw it before buying the plug packs.

http://planetchristmas.com/RopeLight.htm

I did read that and I was just getting ready to wire one of my LOR boxes so instead of cutting just the plug off of the extentions cords I was using for outputs, I cut about a 10" piece off the end and saved them. I now have 16 ends that can be used as plugs when I get some rope light. With two more boxes to wire I will end up with a bunch of pigtails that should work nicely for ropelight.
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boborino wrote:

johnm160 wrote:
I think the spacing is a bit large to try to mount mini's to, the 1/2 spacing sounded good but I think the amount of wire ties to mount each mini may exceed the cost of getting rope lights. :P

I bought a back of 1000 8" wire ties and have gone through about 3/4 of them on my 4 faces. I used the larger holed chicken wire for my 4ft faces, because they were 2 ft wide, so I layed two strips next to each other to fit. The 6ft face I used the black plastic because it was 3ft wide. Again I layed two strips next to each other. Some of the runs were too long and didn't end on an exact 18" section so I used aluminum tape (the kind used to seal A/C vents) to cover the extra. (see picture. It also shows the plastic fencing too).


the thought of having to wire tie all of those mini's is not a happy one. Gonna brain storm this and see If i can find something to mount the mini's to and then mount that to the fencing, thinking something like a wireframe maybe I can hot glue the mini's to.

Open to any other suggestions to avoid 400 wire ties per face...

Not ready to pull the pin on rope light yet, I am still unemployed so I am trying to do this on a budget. I have visions of boxes of rope light for next year though :D

Edit to add: Humm maybe sandwich the sockets of the minis between two dowles
to keep them in line and zip tie that to the fencing??
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Here's a pic of my 4th face. Should get them hung tomorrow! time is getting short and I need to get moving!

Attached files 214298=11930-4thface.jpg

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I know this is going to sound stupid.. but it's probably due to waking up at 3:30am (my time) in Boston this morning, and still being up now (17hrs later, good thing I'm not flying now)

ok.. Pluging in my faces to do some testing, I got the channels wrong, mouth isnt "moving" to the words.. 'cant seem to figure the correct mouth-to-channel # :P I know it really sounds stupid, and I should call it a night and get some sleep, work on it next days off, but that isnt until Thursday... so can someone post a pix with channel # to face position? I have:

Ch 1: Upper eyelids
Ch 2: Lower eyelids
Ch 3: Upper lip
Ch 4: ?
Ch 5: ?
Ch 6: Round mouth
Ch 7: ?

Thankzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz :)

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TJ Hvasta wrote:

I know this is going to sound stupid.. but it's probably due to waking up at 3:30am (my time) in Boston this morning, and still being up now (17hrs later, good thing I'm not flying now)

ok.. Pluging in my faces to do some testing, I got the channels wrong, mouth isnt "moving" to the words.. 'cant seem to figure the correct mouth-to-channel # :) I know it really sounds stupid, and I should call it a night and get some sleep, work on it next days off, but that isnt until Thursday... so can someone post a pix with channel # to face position? I have:

Ch 1: Upper eyelids
Ch 2: Lower eyelids
Ch 3: Upper lip
Ch 4: ?
Ch 5: ?
Ch 6: Round mouth
Ch 7: ?

Thankzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz :)


In my sequences, Channel 4 is the EH sound middle mouth. Channel 5 is the middle smile, and channel 7 is bottom lip. The rest is setup like yours.

I just got them mounted on the house today. My daughter took a quick video, but since I hadn't turned my performance laptop on for over a year, it had a lot of XP updates and AVG virus updates to run, so the sequences kept skipping :P
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Here is a pic of them mounted. Hung the top two in the window and used concrete nails in the mortor and 18gague wire to tie them to the house. The bottom ones are hanging off of the top two. I ended up putting a controller in each of those two upstairs rooms and running extention cords out the window. I'll just need to seal the windows for the next 3 weeks, but daughters are in school so they aren't here to hear the wind whistle :). Now I have to put the rest out.. strobes, webs, etc. (oh and finsh the rest of the sequences.

Attached files 214435=11936-facesup.jpg

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TJ, I also just read your post again and you asked for a picture. I took Crackers original picture and added my channel numbers to it. Middle smile and EH mouth are both a shade of purple but you should get the gist of it.

ON an unrelated note.. hey .. how do I get my signature line with channel numbers to show up? I have it downloaded, but can't find how to put it in a message?

Attached files 214436=11937-crackerface.jpg

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Thanks Bob, I'm trying it again.. but I think I swapped ch 4 & 5, the big mouth and E-mouth :P and I already began adding the upper lip to many of the orphan blocks.... I think i'm going to have to re-grab a Thriller sequence and try working it again..

As for the sig line.. it comes from PlanetChristmas but here's the link that goes in your signature line (My Account, Preferences, Profile), scroll down to sig line and copy/paste this line into it, just change the number of chanels you have:

lor_144_snow_dark.gif

and it should show up as soon as it's saved..


Ok, cant see striaght to do any more work on it tonite.. 'going to save what I've done and get back to it Thursday.. THanks for the help..

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