The Zombie
The plan
To make a zombie pop up inside a coffin that we bought from a local theater. This was a store-bought animatronic that stopped working. I took it apart and added a piston and solenoid to it to give the same pop-up motion it had before.
The parameters
- Must be hidden when not activated
- Try to get lights to trigger at the same time
- Try to re-use existing sound effects
The result
I was able to mount the zombie head to the piston rod and the attach the rod to a piece of wood inside the coffin. We were ab le to use the original sounds effects for a while but eventually they dies too so I had to create my own sound effects and sync then using an iPod and a prop controller.
The lights were LEDs we pulled from an old inflatable. To get them to work we just had to connect them to prop controller which triggers the action and also has 12V output.
The piston and solenoid
The solenoid can be triggered by a step pad or a prop controller that lets me record the animation timing and let it run on a loop.
The hidden zombie
This shows how the zombie stays hidden just below the front panel.
The final zombie
This show how it looks with the zombie and LEDs triggered.
