This luminous jellyfish was a personal project to experiment with new techniques.
A project to experiment with the complex task of creating a highly flexible puppet body that can create the pulsating movements of a jellyfish, whilst also working with practical lightin inside to make it luminous. On these pictures you can see the rig set up and some chroma key tests. The puppet is made from silicone, with patterns painted into the mould and experimenting with the amount of pigment in the silicone to keep the jellyfish transclucent. There is a Neopixel LED inside the jellyfish, with electrical wires connected to the Arduino coming out the top. I used Arduino software to program the LED to create a pulsating light that can be ‘animated’ frame by frame.
The jellyfish has wire inside going into each tentacle. The body can stretch and contract like a jellyfish when posed frame by frame. I built the rig underneath that is holding down fishing line attached to each tentacle to try keep them in place while animating.
The red screen in the back is a lightbox I built, so the chroma key won’t need separate light and the screen can be moved around in moving camera shots.
See image gallery below for more images and details about the fabrication process.
