the Scarlet Letters

That Percy is a generous fellow. Well done!

Wow!! Sven this is gorgeous, already it has such LIFE, and looks masterfully crafted as well. I'm utterly impressed with your new armature design that gives Percy such spirit. I'd love to see his feature film soon I hope!! Bravo to you!

What... no jointed feet! Come on dude, get with the program!!

Heh, just kidding! The AmBrassature MK.II is sweet! And isn't it cool to be able to detatch heads/hands r entire arms and legs if you want and switch from one puppet to another? Imagine after you've got 5 or 6 of these made! After a certain point you'll just be making parts of different lengths; arm rods, leg rods, etc. You'll have a plug-n-play system. Can you just see at somepoint in the future, all of us can email each other and say "Hey, I'll trade you a pair of 2 inch upper arm rods for a couple of 2.5ers?"

Lookin' GOOOOOOD! Very cool...and its nice to see Percy up and around :)

You could call him; The Agent, The Consul, The Deputy, The Diplomat, The Emissary, or The Envoy?

ooo, i like "the Diplomat"!

Thank you Carl, Shelley, Mike, Jeffrey!

I had to at least share a few beauty shots of the new 'ture... But (hopefully) the best is yet to come: I've been working all day at writing a full-fledged tutorial.

It's overwhelming -- there are 57 photos in the tut, including blueprints that I drew up. It's going to be a challenge (even for loquacious me) to get this thing done.

In the meantime: the Sherlines arrived today! Oh, how I wish I had time to play with the mill right now. ;-)

(Man, Mike, you would catch me on the feet... :-P Yeah -- I was bummed that I didn't come up with a way to hinge them on this 'ture. Maybe I'll get that on the next one -- along with elbows and knees that are limited to moving on just one axis.)

Actually, I don't know if I'd limit the movement on elbows and knees. Trust me, there will be times when you'll be very glad to have at least a little extra lattitude on movement there. But go ahead and do it if you must. I know how it is.

Hey, one thing I'm wondering about is the placement of the tensioning balls in the thighs. To me it seems like they might be too close to the joints, making it hard to tighten the screws effectively? Generally I just see a single ball or block or screw right in the center. Any particular reason you went with 2? If you want to use 2 like that, you might consider on the next one moving them a little closer to center. That is if it causes any problems as is. Of course if it ain't broke.....

looking good Sven,

Amazing how much character is added with just the head and hands added to the armature.

(I was just cruising backlinks..) [Thanks for the kind words]

Wow, that's great work. Well done!

I like the armature alone - it immediately brought to mind an image from the amazing Bracelli's 'Bizzarie di Varie Figure'. And at the risk of selfwhoring...more here with link to the original work.

And while I'm being selfreferential....you posted a calligraphy figure above - have you seen the amazing iampeth site? (I've posted a couple of times from it: best historical calligraphy collection going)

peacay: yeah, i saw those! sven once made me a scale-model of burning man that reminds me very much of the bizzarie figure. and i'm a member of the calligraphy group cyberscribes, so iampeth is definitely on my radar. i haven't done much pointed pen work, myself, but i always find it beautiful and fascinating.

for instance (and i mention this because you might be one of the few people who gets why i swoon when i say this), when i was at the getty a couple of years ago i got to look through the original & awkwardly titled "The universal penman: or, The art of writing made useful to the gentleman and scholar, as well as the man of business. Exemplified in all the useful and ornamental branches of modern penmanship; with some necessary observations on the excellency of the pen, and a large number of select sentences in prose and verse; various forms of business, relating to merchandize and trade; letters on several occasions; accurate specimens of the oriental languages, and alphabets in all the hands now practis'd / written, with the friendly assistance of several of the most eminent masters, and engrav'd by Geo. Bickham. The whole embelish'd with beautiful decorations for the amusement of the curious. "

btw, in case you don't know, there are two of us on the blog here. sven does the amazing armatures, while i write about calligraphy & artist's way. :)

That book title is something else Gretchen. Lucky you! And yeah, sorry Sven I did realise there were 2 of you; I was just being lazy with 2 bits in a single comment. sigh Unfortunately my own calligraphic (let alone artistic) skills stretch to calling it 'art' if I sign my name the same way twice in a row. So I'm just a groupie!