Note the new, correct arms! I had to repaint the arms anyway, so I sanded down the whole thing, reprimed, and repainted him so now he looks awesome! All ready for the movie! Guys, a tip: USE A GOLD UNDERCOAT FOR CROW!!!! It doesn't waste the expensive Lime Gold paint and the results are much nicer and much more uniform! Also in this pic you can see I painted the bottom and all of the puppeteering controls. The two things hanging off the bottom are eye controls (pull on to put eyes up, the ohter to look down).
Complete Instuctions to build Crow T. Robot in all of his glory can be found here!
And now:
1. Do not pay excessive amounts of money for either a Cooper XL7 Mask or an "E" Pin. Resin copies are only $40 from Ed, and if you use most other Cooper masks with Styrene Plastic templates for the shroud it's an uncanny resemblence. Mine was a Cooper SG from JoeCrow, who actually gave me the shroud too! I also recieved a great set of plastic arms from him, too, for almost nothing! And, bu the way, these guys are not paying me to say that.
2. If you can't find an "E" Pin, sets of 10 "Crown" Pins are found for less than $10 from your local K-Mart, Wal-Mart, etc. or at eToys.com. And you have TEN of them to screw up with! My third pin was good enough, and it's on my Crow now.
3. If you can find two floraliers at once on Ebay (you see them all the time), it will save you a lot of pain and suffering. And don't pay mor than $20 for two of them. They are listed all the time, with new ones every week, so with paitience you can get a good deal. (If it seems like this list is a bit biased about cost, it is because as a High School student with an allowance I have to be thrifty if I want to actually finish my 'bots.)
4. Shoulders are esily faked with blocks of wood (use a router to "bullnose" them), and for the square frame part I used half of a plastic drawer handle, which was already black. simply drill a couple of holes and you're set. It also helps when fastening the Floraliers to the shoulders to mark out EXACTLY where the holes will go and EXACTLY where the blocks will go in relation to the floraliers. My shoulder blocks are 3 1/2" wide by 3" long by 1 1/4" thick.
5. An easy way to construct Crow's torso is to have the neck on a 1/2" PVC pipe, then have the torso on a 3/4" pipe. Stick a 3/4" fitting on the end of the torso pipe and a 1/2" fitting inside the "Popeet" tubing in his neck and you're set! just add another ring on the 1/2" fitting on the bottom so the head doesn't slide up.
6. "Popeet" tubing can be found in the plumbing section of any hardware store, it's the flex section on a "flex tailpiece" The whole deal, which gives you enough tubing to make at least 2 necks and the small shoulder sections, is about $3.
7. Using the smallest (usually brass) hinge you can find at the local hardware store, saw it in half (width-wise) and rivet this to the two halves of the pin to get a somewhat flexible bowling pin mouth assembly.
8. I use elastic to hold Crow's mouth closed, becuase all of the springs I've found are too tight, which woould make the top of the pin band down when you open his mouth. This problem was seen on Crow in ep. 1001: Soultaker.
9. Krylon Semi-Flat Black works well as a primer, given enough time to dry fully.
10. For the eye mechanism, I used K'nex pieces and some string to make an eye mechanism that looks up and down, and returns to center via a rubber band.
11. Crow is hard to build, so do your homework!
