Making a Ragdoll with Animatronic Eyes

I had decided to make a music video for Swatting Angels, one of the songs off my latest album. I had an idea for a video that features a rag doll with moving eyes, floating above dirty urban scenery, or just hanging out in various locations. Realistically I was pretty sure I couldn’t just buy one of these things at the local animatronic doll shop. And as an independent musician running at a loss since forever I was certain I couldn’t afford to pay someone to make one for me. But if there's one thing I've learnt, it is...

Yes?

You need to start at the start.

Robert Heinlein said “Specialization is for insects”, and who am I to disagree? So, armed with nothing but my wits and a quote from a science fiction writer, I set about to construct my own “animatronic” rag doll. A brief scribble, and I had a list in my mind. I needed three components: A doll, some eyes, and a mechanism of some kind. Details pending.

Starting at the start, I sourced some eyes on eBay. One pair of half round 20 mm Reborn Doll eyes. Green. I didn’t know what a Reborn Doll was at the time, and I wish I didn't now.

You will become the renaissance person of specialist shops

Your mileage may vary, but my project involved visits to a huge range of shops, including second hand shops, toy shops, RC hobbyists, fabric shops, hardware, electronics. 

No suitable rag dolls at any of the goodwill shops, and no suitable patterns at the sewing shop. But I struck gold at the radio control hobby shop. 

Radio controller technology is easy

Maybe that’s overstating it, or maybe I was expecting it to be much harder, but the components just seem to work. A servo (a little electric motor) plugs into a mini receiver, which plugs into a battery pack, and the whole thing is controlled by a hand-held transmitter. Couldn’t be easier. Here’s my first eye mechanism prototype, which I made from a rigid acrylic offcut, piano wire, meccano bolts and some servo bits and bobs. The eyes only track from left to right, and they move unevenly, but that's good enough for me.

Your rotary tool is your new best friend

You don’t have a rotary tool? You need one. Get one now. I’ll wait here till you come back.

I can’t believe I spent so many years without one of these psychotic little toys. From cutting acrylic sheets down to size, to drilling teeny holes for moving parts, to shaping a polystyrene doll’s face, to gouging eye holes in plastic casing – this thing does it all. Within very little time I had the mechanism perfected and in a plastic box.

We liked the box so much it was even used to decorate our Christmas Banzai

Shaping polystyrene balls makes a lot of mess

A rotary tool and a rasp make short work of a polystyrene ball, and before long I had a head shape and a room full of tiny polystyrene fragments. Pro-tip: don't let that polystyrene get everywhere. It takes ages to get rid of it. 

I covered the front of the head with wet felt, two coats, and glued the hell out of it with a hot glue gun. The shop assistant at the fabric shop asked "Are you a robotics engineer?" Sure.

Which is creepier? Without the eyes...

...or...

...with the eyes?

Sewing is nowhere near as difficult as you might think

Make a design, then turn that design into a dolly. It's rag doll sewing, not rocket sewing. I did the good old wool for hair, and did this body design, which I turned into templates, with the components and construction based on some rag doll patterns I found.

  
Then several days of sobbing and chanting about how easy sewing is, I reached the finished product. The head has a screw running down from the eye box to a dowel rod that runs through the doll's body. The eyes have felt lids added and fixed with a hot glue gun. The eyebrows and mouth are also fixed in place with hot glue. And VIOLA!

Voila, stupid

Creepy? Here's the final video: