Alien Jump scare Effect
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” —Thomas Edison
We’ve never been afraid of trying again and again until we get it right. Creating an intense, physical experience that hits you in the face (or appears to) takes work and a fierce devotion to the problem. The entire mechanism that delivers a physical jump scare, inspired by the film Alien, needed to be fast, reliable and programmable. The process took almost 20 iterations to get right, but each iteration built on the lessons of the previous. Working with a small team of talented and dedicated artists and technologists at M1, the jump scare grew with each version.
The facehugger mechanical puppet is a complete module, able to be interchanged onsite to the jump scare mechanism that pushes the mechanical puppet at the mirrors inside the kiosk. These angles needed to be precise, so there was a great deal of work in aligning and measuring to give us the size of the face hugger, as well as the length of throw to the jump scare mechanism.
The facehugger puppet needed to be small, lightweight, translucent, have thin fingers, and be reliable and durable. The puppet fingers are controlled by a single servo, programmed with Arduino and controlled entirely with TouchDesigner.
The first version was sculpted in plasticine, then cast in resin, and designed to fit over a servo, which would pull the fingers. This proved to be too large to fit visually into the kiosk. The second version was printed with our resin printer, and engineered to manipulate the front 4 fingers with metal connecting rods.
The final iteration of the fingers was made of zip ties and wire, with simple glue holding it together. It proved to be very durable, and had no fatigue over time, often a problem with metal mechanisms.
The body was covered with cast latex, with an airbrushed surface. It is internally lit with an LED, also controlled by our software.
The jump scare mechanism that pushes the puppet in the kiosk was made with off-the-shelf mounting u-brackets and x-rail, with a large, powerful servo.
To convert the power into the speed required, the servo was offset, and given a large “effort to fulcrum” distance, which converted high torque to high speed. Simple medical tubing offset the weight of the facehugger. This was tested for many hours, with several thousand jumps, and no loss of power.
The entire process required a very open creative process. We tried everything, failed early, and weren’t afraid of going back to earlier ideas, using the new information we’d gathered along the way. More than anything, we worked as a team and learned from each other. Few great ideas are done in isolation. Even in these challenging times.
Author: Chris Tedin