Intro:
I decided to design b3ta to have a range of facial expressions, the goal being having movements in the face which mimic the movements of an animal (ears, nose, whiskers) and human (eyes, lips, mouth, eyelids, eyebrows).

Doing this will require anamatronics, or put otherwise, the planning of:

What needs to move and how
Testing the desired expressions/movements on the 3d model (rigging/animating in blender)
Abstracting these movements to mechanical motions
Prototyping
Building (3d printing, mechano, wire, foam, motors, linear actuators, guy cord, drive belts, steppers, ping pong balls, abs, silicon rubber, fymo, paint, foam, mesh, wire mesh, dye, …)
Wiring
Programming

… It’ll be a lot of work… Each of these points will be expanded on periodically, as completed and written up nicely. This may cause a delay in some parts as I work sporadically on different stages, to maintain variety in jobs and pique interest (also my problem solving and thought procesess are a little …frenetic).

I think I’ll post the work on the ears next. Or prototype head meshing (from last year).