Hitting a contestant in the face with a series of waterbottles was a fun challenge! I made a net out of some surplus green vinyl strapping, and a steel pipe frame to hold all of the bottles in single file. When a motor pulled on an end of the belt, they would drop into a hopper one-by-one. At the bottom of the hopper was a little conveyor belt powered by toy car motors, which would feed each bottle into a tennis ball launcher to fire them at the contestant.
I modified an old slot machine to perform a complicated task: First, after the contestant pulled the slot machine’s arm the three tumblers were to spin and then stop so that a fist icon was facing forward. Next, lights were to flash, the winnings drawer was to drop open, and then a rubber fist would pop out and punch the contestant in the balls.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the complete machine in operation on the set, since I was too busy flipping switches and pressing buttons to control the machine. The scissor-hinged punching mechanism was re-used in an ATM machine built for the show, so you can see it there too!
This one was fun to make! I traced my hand, scaled it up 200% and then made a foam hand with acrylic nails from the pattern. The arm is made out of 2×4′s glued together and swung with the aid of pneumatics. I scaled up a normal wooden chair 150% and built it out of 2x4s and plywood. The shoes are just clown shoes painted with flat black paint. I made a sleeve out of a trouser leg and Jessie Voris helped out by stitching together some pant legs for the project.
It was tested out by almost everyone in the props department.
This one was a challenge! I made this creature out of all sorts of materials: lobster claws, doll parts, shells from the beach, latex gloves, ping-pong balls, dust masks, shark jaws, lots of latex, and a toy octopus… a real potpourri of stuff.
Katie Akana thought of the pneumatic mechanism to suddenly open the creatures’ eyes, and Courtland Premo wired up a remote control device which used CO2 cartridge tire inflators and servos to operate the pneumatics.
At first I tried making this breakaway glass TV screen out of expensive plastic casting materials, but to keep things within our budget I switched to a sugar-glass recipe.
I made a silicone rubber mold of the actual TV screen, so that the mold could be carefully flexed away from the screen without cracking. The super-hot melted sugar and corn syrup mixture was poured into the mold and spread evenly onto the form until it cooled.
The best benefit of candy glass over plastic breakaway glass was that instead of needing to wear a respirator, I could eat the casting material! Also, I was surprised that the candy glass could be carefully sanded and painted… though it did deform over time, so it needed to be used within a day or two.
Jason Singleton built the pneumatic punching mechanism, and Dario Gimenez modified the TV’s wooden cabinet.
Designing and building this machine was one of my biggest challenges on Silent Library.
Figuring out a way for the hands to rotate around a point where I could place no pivots was tricky – so I made a semicircular track for a set of rollerskate wheels, and attached a pair of silicone hands to the wheels. The hands are moved by steel bars which slide in tracks to convert the circular motion of the motor into the back and forth motion of the hands. Some bearings helped to keep everything running smoothly.
My task on this project was creating an automatic mechanism that would fire a dozen eggs at contestants on Silent Library.
I experimented with a tennis-ball-style launcher first, but settled on a gatling gun setup, powered by a disassembled t-shirt gun. The revolver chamber is made out of sections of PVC tubing ringed with UVA foam to prevent air from leaking out of the gun. A one-way mechanism rotates the revolving barrels to advance a new egg into place whenever the chicken cycles. A cable pulls on the gun’s trigger when the chicken is in the horizontal so that the eggs will fire out of the rear of the chicken at the right moment. Dario Gimenez sculpted the chicken-shaped cover for the machine.
Below is a video of the mechanism at work (with the air gun removed,) followed by a clip of the egg gun firing a few eggs at a contestant.
This seven-foot-tall crane was made to strike game show contestants in the groin with a sand-filled plastic wrecking ball. The frame is made from steel, with plywood panels, heater vents, lawnmower wheels, and some video arcade switches.
Courtland Premo helped with the electrical system, and I managed to hit the poor contestant in the groin in two out of my three attempts. Yay!
This was a fun challenge!
The writers for Silent Library wanted to hit the contestants with ostrich eggs… but since ostrich eggs are expensive and are so hard that they need to be opened with a hammer, I needed to create some fake ostrich eggs that would make a mess and not kill anyone.
I started by creating a two-part plaster mold from an actual ostrich egg (the egg might have cooked from the heat of the curing plaster, though I never found out since the egg stayed unopened in the refrigerator for the rest of the shoot.)
Porcelain was poured into the plaster mold and left for a few minutes to form a thin shell, and after the porcelain had dried melted parrafin wax was poured into the porcelain shell to make it waterproof. Each of the dozen fake eggs that I made contained the goo from eighteen chicken eggs (thanks to Craig Burghardt for teaching me how to open eggs with one hand, mess hall style.)
The fake eggs were sealed with more melted wax, primed, and then spraypainted. Courtland Premo made a catapult to launch these eggs, and they totally didn’t hurt anyone!
I’ve made things that punch people, and machines that kick people, but here’s a machine I made that kicks and punches people at the same time! Increases productivity by 100%!
The foot and fist are both set in motion by pneumatic cylinders, with a foam foot inside the boot and a foam fist, so that no bones would be busted.
