Wicked Makers

Sneak Peak: "The Puppet" Animatronic

We just got back from an incredible weekend at Open Sauce 2024, a Maker/Creator conference in San Francisco dedicated to Engineering, Science, and Art. It was incredible! We got to visit Adam Savage's workshop as well as Mark Rober's Crunchlabs, and we spent a ton of time with some of our favorite friends and creators like Evan & Katelyn, Nerdforge, Little Gem, and like a hundred others. It was incredibly inspiring and I can't...

The Scissor Mech Works!

After a few days of cutting, welding, drilling, and experimenting, we got it all working!!

As you can probably guess, the character (or boxing glove? or whatever lol) will get attached to the end and it springs out super fast when it's turned on!

One of the tricky parts is that you can see the bottom of the first piece has to slide up and down to compensate for the vertical positioning as it extends. Some people use curtain track for this but we couldn't find any so we used some a...

Building a Pneumatic Scissor Mech ✂

We're getting started on our next project, which is going to be using this pneumatic "scissor" to do a lunging jumpscare kind of thing. It's going to be awesome!!

(We've got a character in mind but we'll talk more about that in a later post.)

Basically the way this works is the scissor gets pulled back and then extends forward via an air cylinder. Depending on how you build you can extend this REALLY far too which is super cool.

I designed this version in Fusion and this wee...

Ink Demon Head - 3D Printing Files

Hey all! Here is the full Ink Demon head model, sculpted by Beardless Props!

This one uses the same standard 75mm x 75mm mounting plate on the back. I've also included the parts for the Jaw mechanism in case you want to make that as well! If you're simply attaching the Jaw, you'll want the L and R hinges and can ignore the center pieces (in Part 3).

Let me know if you have any questions. 🤘🤘 2024-05-25 00:41:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Ink Demon: First Animation Test and Update!

Good morning, y'all! We're in the home stretch on the Ink Demon this week as we wrap things up and push for the final details. This week a lot happened!

We completed the duct tape form and tin foil body shape, though we decided not to do the additional layer of spray foam and to just build out the finer details like his ribs, muscles, fingers, etc. using more tin foil. It leaves a slightly dif...

Ink Demon Update, also..ONE MILLION SUBSCRIBERS!!

We hit 1 million subscribers on YouTube! Hard to believe we've come this far since starting a little side project in our garage, but here we are! Somehow it still feels every morning like we're just getting started...I hope that never fades away, so let's do this!

The Ink Demon project is going fairly well so far, we've hit a couple of big obstacles but so far we've been able to overcome them as always!

2024-04-29 13:44:00 +0000 UTC View Post

SNEAK PEAK: Ink Demon Animatronic from Bendy! (Also...we learned how to weld!!)

Hey all! We're about a week into our next big project and as usual we've taken on something insanely awesome: the Ink Demon from Bendy and the Ink Machine!

This is another highly requested character that we've been reluctant to build in the past just due to the sheer difficulty of it. The skinny body, the shiny, sculpted inky skin, the huge mouth,...

DogDay Head - 3D Printing Files

Hey folks! Here is the full DogDay head model, sculpted by Beardless Props!

The default size is BIG since it was modeled for our animatronic. It can be resized, just keep in mind the mounting hardware will need to get a bit smaller too.

Approximate Dimensions:

- 20" Wide
- 18" Tall
- 16.75" Deep (Back of Head to Tip of Nose)

We had zero issues printing it an...

Sneak Peak: DogDay Animatronic!

Pneumatics!!! We finally dove in head first and created one of the most insane things ever to come through our shop. 😅

(THERE ARE VIDEOS OF IT MOVING IN DISCORD!!! YOU GET ACCESS TO THE PRIVATE CHANNEL AS PATRONS. COME JOIN US!)

With the previous video (CatNap) being such a huge success, both from a maker perspective but also on YouTube, we decided to roll right into doing another highly r...

Wiper Motor PVC Mount - 3D Printing STL File

Hey all! As seen in our CatNap animatronic video, I designed a custom wiper motor mount for 1" pvc pipe and here is the file! It gives you a way to sturdily attach your wiper motor parallel to your PVC so you can build your own animatronics!

You can see this in action here: https://youtu.be/Fh6mimCibhQ (around the 3:00 mark!)

It has three holes to mount to the PVC that were designed for M3 (3mm) bolts. They're a ...

Sneak Peak: CatNap Animatronic!

Hey all! We're a good ways through our next project video which, by a significant margin, is our most highly requested creature to date. He's called 'CatNap' and we've had THOUSANDS of requests to build him in just the last couple of weeks alone.

Basically he's a super creepy, giant evil cat. 😅

Not sure if the Cheshire Cat was part of his inspiration but he's ...

3/4in and 1/2in Adapters for our PVC Joints!

As requested by many, here are two new adapters for use with 3/4" and 1/2" PVC pipes!

You can use these with any of our 1" PVC parts to convert them to smaller sizes. The thinner pipes will definitely be cheaper, but just keep in mind they'll also be a lot more flexible and less rigid!

Occasionally, depending on brand, there are tiny differences in the sizes of some PVC pipes. I'd recommend printing a couple of these and bringing them to the store with you to make sure you get pip...

Building Animatronic Mickey - Introduction

Welcome to our new Patreon series! If you saw the "Nightmare Mickey" animatronic build on YouTube, you'll be familiar with this project, and in these videos we'll work through not just how we made the animatronic stuff, but also how to fix the issues we had (and will continue to have...).

First and foremost, this is not a definitive, simple tutorial on how to build the perfect thing. This is an ongoing, work-in-progress project where we’ll continually shar...

Nightmare Mickey - 3D Printing Files (Incl. 3-Axis Head)

NOTE: READ THIS PRIOR TO DOWNLOADING. 

This is our first time providing parts for such a complex build and there's a good chance I've missed something below. You can leave questions in the comments but the best place to get realtime feedback is in our #supporters-only channel in Discord!

Included in the downloads below:

Nightmare Mickey: Jaw/Mouth Animation

We got the jaw working!! Took a couple of days of trial and error but it works and we're happy. :)

The video above is our first test with all four movements: the 3 head servos and jaw, all at once. It's being controlled with a Playstation controller so it still takes some puppetry to make it move, but there is so much life to it!!

Still lots of tweaking to go like dialing in the limits on each servo to make sure they don't bang into each other, and making sure things are in optima...

Nightmare Mickey: First Animatronic Test!!!

Today was fun!! After gluing the four quadrants of Mickey's head together we were finally able to test the head animatronic. We learned our lesson on Springtrap not to wait to long to test things....so we bolted the mech onto his head and gave it a go!

To our surprise, it worked just fine right off the bat!!! (We're not used to that... 😅) We had this genuine moment of like, "Wow, we're getting better at this, it didn't crumble into pieces and fall apart!" which felt really good.

Sneak Peak: Nightmare Mickey Animatronic!

Happy 2024! We're working on a brand new "from scratch" animatronic this month...a 3-axis head mech on a custom 3D model of a withered, broken down "Nightmare" version of Steamboat Willie-era Mickey! Moving head, moving jaw, glowing eyes...also we can control it with a PlayStation controller... it's going to be AWESOME!!

We're starting with just the head for this video and if it works and you guys like it, we'll continue on this year and build out the rest of the body and continue to de...

Wicked Workshops: Upcoming Video Courses!

Hey there, Wicked Fam!

Hope you had an outstanding Halloween! 🎃 Between haunt season and dealing with the storm, the past weeks have been a bit of a blur, but we've got some fun news to share and we're excited to bring y'all into the loop.

By popular demand, we'll soon be branching out into a new realm here on Patreon: exclusive video courses! 🎥✨

Our YouTube channel has always been where we put our biggest projects, but often there just isn't enough time to ...