We made a real CATNAP Animatronic!
Summary
TLDRIn this video, the makers embark on an ambitious project to create a life-size, animatronic version of Catnap, the creepy boss monster from Poppy Playtime Chapter 3. They meticulously craft the skeleton using PVC pipes, incorporating intricate mechanics like motors, fog machines, and servos to bring the sinister feline to life. Through a series of challenges and setbacks, they sculpt Catnap's terrifying head, construct his massive mutant feet, and cover the entire structure in purple fur. The video culminates in an awe-inspiring reveal, where the imposing animatronic breathes eerie red fog and its head eerily moves, breathing life into the nightmarish creation.
Takeaways
- ๐ฑ They built a life-size animatronic of Catnap, the boss from Poppy Playtime Chapter 3, entirely from scratch.
- ๐ฆด They used PVC pipes to construct the animatronic's skeleton and joints, with custom 3D-printed connectors for added flexibility.
- ๐ฉ They incorporated various mechanisms like motors, servos, and a control box with an Arduino to animate the animatronic's movements and breathing fog effect.
- ๐จ They meticulously sculpted Catnap's head from foam, taking several days and overcoming challenges to achieve the desired creepy look.
- ๐งถ They covered the animatronic in purple fur, carefully stitching the fabric together using the 'Muppet Stitch' technique.
- ๐ They used the 'blackest black' paint and fabric to create Catnap's haunting, void-like eyes and mouth.
- ๐ฅ They went the extra mile by gold-leafing Catnap's moon pendant for an extravagant touch.
- ๐ป They utilized software like Bango to animate Catnap's head movements, exporting the animations to the Arduino control box.
- ๐ค The final animatronic can move its body up and down, breathe out fog, and move its head, bringing the creepy Catnap character to life.
- ๐ฅ The entire build process was documented, highlighting the challenges, setbacks, and the team's perseverance in creating this ambitious project.
Q & A
What is the project they are working on in this video?
-In this video, they are building a real-life, animatronic version of Catnap, the main boss from the Poppy Playtime Chapter 3 video game.
What materials are they using to construct the skeleton of the animatronic?
-They are using PVC pipes and custom 3D-printed PVC joints to build the skeleton and create the desired pose for the animatronic.
How are they creating the breathing/fog effect for the animatronic?
-They are using a fog machine with a micro fogger placed inside the body, with a hose running up to the mouth to create the effect of Catnap breathing out red fog.
What techniques are they using to make the animatronic's head move?
-They are using a large servo motor connected to the head with a custom-made box to enable the head to move back and forth, controlled by an Arduino and animation software.
What challenges did they face during the sculpting process for the head?
-The sculpting process for the head was particularly challenging, taking several days and causing a lot of stress. Jamie was ready to give up on it at one point, but they persevered and achieved a satisfactory result.
How did they create the blackest black effect for the eyes and mouth?
-They used a special ultra-black paint called "Musou Black" and a blackest black fabric to create the effect of an endless void of darkness for the eyes and mouth.
What technique did they use to join the fur fabric seamlessly?
-They used a technique called the "Muppet Stitch," which is commonly used in making Muppets, to join the furry fabric together without visible seams.
How did they add the golden moon accessory to the animatronic?
-They 3D-printed the moon accessory and used a gold leafing technique to apply a thin layer of gold-like material to make it look extravagant.
What software did they use to animate the animatronic's head movements?
-They used a free software called Bango, which is specifically designed for animating animatronics, to create and export the head movement animations to the Arduino.
What were some of the overall challenges they faced during this project?
-Building Catnap was described as the hardest thing they've ever done, with the longest hours, the most setbacks, and difficulty at every step. However, they acknowledged that challenging themselves and pushing beyond their limits is how they improve and grow.
Outlines
๐ง Laying the Groundwork for the Catnap Animatronic
The team outlines their plan to build a massive, breathing animatronic of the Catnap character from Poppy Playtime Chapter 3. They start by constructing a flexible PVC skeleton with custom 3D-printed joints, adding a motor to create subtle idle movements. A fog machine is set up to simulate Catnap's 'poppy gas' breathing effect. The skeleton is reinforced with a rib cage structure, and the team tackles challenges like determining fog machine placement.
๐พ Sculpting and Detailing the Catnap Animatronic
The team sculpts Catnap's massive foam head, a process that proves challenging and stressful. They use various tools and techniques to carve and shape the head, constantly refining and improving it. Journaling with the Day One app helps alleviate stress during this intensive sculpting phase. The team also crafts Catnap's feet with claws, using polymer clay and experimenting with different painting techniques.
๐ง Bringing the Catnap Animatronic to Life
After successfully sculpting the head, the team focuses on attaching it to the body and animating it. They devise a servo-controlled neck mechanism and create a control box with an Arduino to manage the animatronic's movements. Testing and troubleshooting are carried out to ensure the head's stability and balance. The team also paints Catnap's eyes and mouth using the blackest paint and fabric available for a truly haunting effect.
๐งถ Applying the Finishing Touches to the Catnap Animatronic
With the animatronic's structure complete, the team moves on to the final detailing and cosmetic touches. They carefully apply purple fur fabric to the body, using the "muppet stitch" technique to create seamless joints. Catnap's claws are painted with a metallic finish, and his moon-shaped zipper pull is adorned with gold leaf for an extravagant touch. The team overcomes challenges like paint adhesion issues on the polymer clay claws.
๐ฌ The Final Reveal of the Catnap Animatronic
After months of hard work and overcoming numerous challenges, the team finally completes the Catnap animatronic. They program the head movements using the Bango software, creating realistic animations controlled by the Arduino. In the end, they express gratitude to their supporters and tease the final reveal of the animatronic in action, promising an impressive and terrifying spectacle.
Mindmap
Keywords
๐กAnimatronic
๐กPVC pipes
๐ก3D printing
๐กServo motor
๐กArduino
๐กFoam sculpting
๐กFur fabrication
๐กBlackest black
๐กGold leafing
๐กAnimatronic animation
Highlights
The creators aim to build a real-life animatronic version of Catnap, the main boss in Poppy Playtime Chapter 3, completely from scratch. This ambitious project involves creating a massive 8ft tall animatronic that can move, breathe fog, and feature glowing eyes.
They begin by building a skeleton using PVC pipes and custom 3D printed PVC joints, allowing for flexible positioning and movement.
A wiper motor and a servo are incorporated to create subtle body movements and animating the head, aiming for a realistic idle animation.
To recreate Catnap's signature red fog, they plan to use a fog machine with a red LED in the mouth, as red fog is not a real thing.
The creators use various materials like foam, tape, and pool noodles to sculpt Catnap's body, ribs, and other features, emphasizing the importance of capturing the creepy, skinny look.
They incorporate a journaling app, Day One Journal, to document their progress, goals, and challenges, helping them stay motivated and organized throughout the build.
Creating Catnap's massive head proves to be one of the most challenging aspects, with the sculpting process taking several days and causing stress.
They use a blackest black paint and fabric, called Musou Black, to capture the endless void-like appearance of Catnap's eyes and mouth.
Attaching the heavy head to the body while ensuring stability and movement is a significant hurdle, which they solve using a custom-made box and a servo.
Covering the animatronic with fur presents challenges due to the non-stretchy fabric and the need to hide seams, which they address using techniques like the Muppet Stitch.
They incorporate extravagant details like gold leafing on Catnap's moon zipper pull, showcasing their dedication to accuracy and quality.
The creators encounter setbacks, such as a paint issue with the claws, which they resolve by removing the paint and starting over with a metallic paint.
To animate Catnap's head, they use a large servo and free software called Bango, which allows them to easily create and export different animations.
Throughout the build, the creators acknowledge the challenges and setbacks they faced, emphasizing the importance of pushing themselves and learning from each project.
The final reveal showcases the completed, fully animated Catnap animatronic, bringing the terrifying video game character to life in an impressive and detailed way.
Transcripts
in this video we're going to build a
real catnap animatronic that actually
breathes fog or Jamie and Jame we bring
your favorite monsters to life like this
8ft tall hookie Wy and this real life
springtrap from FNAF today the challenge
is to build this animatronic completely
from scratch which is not easy catnap is
the main boss in poppy playtime chapter
3 and it's to well just look just look
at it also you know a couple of you
asked us to make this project so here we
go first though we need a plan we're
going to start by using some PVC pipes
to build a skeleton and then giving a
really cool pose next we'll figure out
all the animatronics like the motors the
fog and the glowing eyes and we'll cover
the whole thing in purple fur finally
will his insanely creepy head and also
this thing is like huge it's it's very
big it's going to be great we're using
1in PVC because it's rigid enough to
hold them all together but also a little
bit flexible which we're going to try to
use to our advantage to connect all
these pieces we're going to use regular
PVC connectors but we're also going to
use these custom PVC joints that we
developed these give us a lot more
angles for like elbow positions and
stuff like that they're 3D printable
they're super easy to make and if you
want to make your own you can find the
files on our patreon all right do we
have all of our pieces I hope so there's
a lot there's four legs there's a spine
a head and stuff so there's like a
million pieces let's just start
building and at the bottom one of these
that is a flange that gets attached to
the ground go like this all right our
spine is going to be like two parallel
lines cuz that's going to keep it from
twisting give a little more strength and
it's going to bend in the center cuz
spines do that on
cats all good no no something's
not Bing okay look at that our very own
cat spine B spine so this is the
shoulders and down there is going to be
the hips so the legs are going to attach
right here but to attach them we're
going to use these rotating PVC joints
that we made and if you want to see
exactly how to make these check out our
pirate skeleton animatronic basically
they're going to go in here like this
except they're too small so we made
these adapters they go on there like
that one on each side and now I can put
this right in there and if we pretend
that this is the shoulder at the top of
the leg we can put that in there and now
the leg can rotate I think we got to
move the table it's good yeah this
thing's going to be big and it's it's
not going to fit up here that's I hope
that's enough space it's like our whole
garage all right these are his feets so
we got
to
okay we're missing a piece oh this is a
beautiful pose all right you got it yes
all right just sit tight for a second
okay go ah okay wait hold
on there's no easy way to do it okay I
went around and I tightened up all of
the different joints and I bolted his
feet to the ground and I added some
little screws on the rotating things
here to make sure that they don't come
out and now now everything is nice and
tight and watch this we've got this
really nice rotation in the back here so
the next step is we're going to put a
motor here and we're going to actually
make it look like this whole thing is
moving so this is a wiper motor it's the
same type of thing we used on Huggy
except this time I designed a mount for
it so we can actually Mount the motor
directly to the PVC you mean instead of
our lovely hack job of uh hose clamps
and plywood we've learned a lot since
then I think we've gotten
better
[Music]
so on our shaft here at the end I've got
these rod end bearings which are like
these little things that rotate and we
discovered these when we did our Mickey
animatronic so we're kind of combining a
bunch of stuff we've learned recently
into one so I want the focus of the
movement to be the head and the
breathing of the fog but I also I don't
want the whole body to look like it's
just a statue right I want to create
essentially like an idle animation so
with this in place hopefully this should
kind of Rise and Fall a little bit and
the flexibility of the PVC should work
let's try
this it's doing it it's working woo I
was expecting it to like break into
pieces and fall apart kind of
flabbergasted that's so cool yeah I love
this this is so cool I think when you're
animating things subtlety like this is
key right like if you ever played a
video game when all the characters are
just kind of standing still they're not
statues right they're kind of just like
Milling around a little bit so it's like
recreating that on a big thing I'm
working on making like the interior
frame of the body now we learned the
hard way that you have to keep fur
really far away from any mechanical
stuff cuz if you don't bad things happen
so what I'm going to do is try and build
like a rib cage type thing and then
we're going to cover that in foam and
the our fur
okay the rings are on for now I want to
do a motion test and make sure nothing
like collides into itself yeah that
seems like a goodidea it's a little
close down
here it literally is like that close to
it is that good or bad I mean it clears
it I mean technically it's fine right
it's technically fine as long as it
doesn't move katnap breeds out this red
fog called poppy gas and it's a sleeping
gas we're going to try to recreate that
with a fog machine
but I'm trying to decide if we're going
to use a big normal siiz fog machine or
something smaller like this and uh oh
and by the way you can't make red fog
that's not really a thing so instead
we're going to use a red LED in the
mouth and kind of do something like that
well if we have the big one like where
you going to put it it's just going to
be like next to him yeah that's why I
don't like using these cuz you'd have to
have it like away and then run a hose
maybe up its leg or something or we
could put this like you know kind of
underneath the zipper and then run a
hose out to the mouth look at this there
there's more there's more more stuff I
gave him a butt a but do cats have butts
yes cats have butt well I mean yes okay
yeah that's a nice cat butt I also gave
him like this cage around the Rings and
I think that's going to give him some
more stability there holds everything
together okay I was going to cover this
in foam but I think that might add a too
much bulk so instead I think I'm going
to cover it in tape and then add stuff
on on top of that before you do that
though I think I decided that I want to
use this microfogger thing so I made
this Mount so this is going to go on
here like that and then it's going to
live like down here and then there'll be
a a hose that comes up into the
mouth what you got going here some fuzzy
stuff unlike Huggy wuggy catnap actually
has pretty short fur this one is not the
right color this one is like way too
long but the color is at least closer
you could shave it maybe like you know
when you shave a cat except our cat
doesn't have any fur so we don't shave
him but you know what I mean like you
cut it you know what I could do I could
make him a purple fuzzy jacket make him
a jacket yeah I mean he seems to like
the fur so I'll be right
[Music]
back we realized there was too big of a
gap here and we didn't need it to be
that big so we added some extra wires
got it taped up and now it's looking
nice and shapely and round and catnap
like we still need access to all the
stuff up here so on the chest we left it
open but on the back it's really close
to that motor so we made this protective
Flappy thing that we can tape and untape
when we need to access it one of catnaps
creepiest features is how skinny and
kind of almost like starved looking he
looks so we're going to try to create
some ribs and like a you know some bones
that'll stick out from under the fur
we're going to try and use pool noodles
for this they're light and they're
flexible and they're pretty easy to
[Music]
shape he's got he's got vertebrae now
it's like a dinosaur or
something hey he's got a rib cage
now you putting some foam on there good
job
perfect these legs took a whole day
longer than we thought they were going
to they look so good though like it's
simple you wrap a leg and then you put
some bumps on it but no no the duct tape
came off because fun fact duct tape
doesn't stick to foam so we wrapped and
salvaged what we could and then we glued
the rest and then we just duct tape
bubble wrap to make his like leg bumps
this part is finally done and we can
move on to the next step I think it was
great hi five
thanks look at this thing it's too big
it's so big oh okay to be fair we're
going to carve at least half of this way
My worry is that how am I going to
sculpt this yeah but you say that every
time and what happens what happens every
time it's funny that we're worried about
two completely different things so we
have a front view and a top view and a
side view and we're going to tape these
on here Trace some and then carve away
everything that is outside of those
lines this doesn't include the ears does
it it's even bigger than this yeah I
mean yeah to cut the foam I'm going to
use these tools from hot wire Foam
Factory they cut through really nicely
so if you're interested in these there's
a link in the
[Music]
description
we're done look it's cat
yay this is hard this is a huge block of
foam and trying to make it look like
anything is it's slow goinging and
hard this ended up being really
challenging I kept telling her it looked
great but at this point it had been
almost 3 days of sculpting and Jamie was
ready to throw this thing out the
window I brought you a dut thank you I
am so stressed about this head right now
and I know it's probably going to be
fine but that doesn't stop anxiety one
thing that's been surprisingly helpful
to ease the stress of this project has
been journaling and to do that we've
been using a free app called day one
Journal who's the sponsor of today's
video we've been journaling every single
day of the build what we did that day
what our goals are for the next day what
went wrong or right cuz sometimes you
work an entire day hours and hours and
and then it feels like you've
accomplished absolutely nothing but the
journaling we can actually look back at
it each day and see that like hey we
actually did a lot even even though it
doesn't always feel like it day one
Journal has been the perfect app for
this I'm new to journaling but the app
makes it totally painless to get started
there's built-in templates there's daily
writing prompts if you need inspiration
and everything is private with endtoend
encryption it also has great premium
features so we can add photos and videos
from each day drawings and it has a cool
voice to text transcription so we can
talk through what happened instead of
typing it if you want to try day one
Journal today go to day one app.com
Wicked makers and use the code Wicked
makers to unlock a limited time offer of
a 2mon free trial of Day One Premium
again that's d y nea.com Wicked makers
and use our code for two free months of
Premium it's totally worth it whether
it's for your stress relief or you just
want to you know Chronicle your
adventures go give it a try and now back
to this giant head wait eat your dut
first one eternity
later are you kidding me come on I told
you didn't I tell this is incredible you
turned a giant six lb block of foam into
this so good I'm so proud of you thank
you next up we're going to do his little
nose so I glued some EVA foam together
and I'm going to carve it and it'll go
right there and then we're also going to
do some
ears what are you up to oh I spent the
last few days trying to figure out how
to make his head move and where to put
all of this stuff so far on all the
animatronics we've made from scratch
something always breaks or falls apart
and I'm trying to fix that we got this
big Servo and this is going to be his
neck and it's going to allow the head to
move back and forth and the next problem
I have to solve is how to actually
attach the giant giant head to this cuz
if you just stick a pipe into the back
of his head it's just going to fall off
so we'll see I don't know this cat has
huge feet so the first thing I did was I
made a tin foil foot and it's got a hole
because it's going to slide over the
ankle he's going to have giant claws
coming out the end of his toes but first
i'm going to cover this all in foam
playay
did you run out of white clay maybe yeah
the foam Clay is cool but it takes
forever to dry so we've just got to let
these sit for a few days so the Feats
are dry and it's time to make the claws
but I'm now realizing I probably should
have made the claws first and sculpted
them actually into the toes we're going
to make the claws now and then somehow
figure out a way to join them together
so this is sculpy and I'm going to use
it for the claws because we can bake it
and it'll be dry in like 15 minutes or
cured not dried that's what we learned
Pro tip don't use like a skin colored
clay for non-skin things it's just weird
I did a quick test with epoxy clay to
bridge the gap there and I think
something like this is going to
work okay these giant mutant cat feet
are mostly done they have to dry
overnight and then tomorrow we'll paint
them made a box you sure did so it's got
some holes in it so the wires can come
through the neck and go into the head
and then it's got like this thing inside
that this attaches to the servo and then
look Servo rotates and bingo problem
solved so are you just going to like
glue that box to the back of his head
no Jamie was not excited about me
cutting a huge hole into the back of
this but it all worked out
that wasn't too
[Music]
bad Bingo nice should we try it on see
if it holds up I'm still worried that
it's too heavy yes to our box there we
go a good day oh oh oh that doesn't Well
the box worked but the whole thing
started to
collapse fixing again we had to spread
the legs out more and they need to be in
a very particular angle because the pose
is so Dynamic doesn't balance otherwise
but it works and look we can even push
on
it you know what though I hate to say it
but it's real big I know I think it's
too
big I took off a whole lot of material
and I don't even know if you can tell
but there's a lot gone from this and
here's the truth I could work on this
for like three more days and probably
still not be happy with it but at some
point you have to call it and it has to
be done because we have to move on to
add to the stress even more we had to
figure out how to drill holes from the
eyes and mouth all the way back to where
the box is for the wires in the fog hose
to glue in the Box we used expanding
spray foam so that we could position it
exactly where we wanted and then the
foam will fill in all the
gaps so you can see that this expanding
foam expanded and filled up all these
gaps and now we have to actually cut
away all this extra