Bridgel and I sat down and discussed about the zebra and Oxpecker, thinking about the most interesting parts of the individual animals:

Mindmap:

We then looked through online sources for inspiration of our project.

Inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azy-c6QXUCw

 

Idea two:

Ideation:

For our first idea, we wanted to focus on the “alarm” system that the Oxpecker has. Upon the incoming of a predator, the oxpecker would fly up and make calls which will alert the animals nearby, therefore incorporating this upward motion and sound element onto this idea. On the other hand, basing on Theo Jansen mechanism we wanted to recreate the anatomy of the zebra’s legs and movement. The bicycle model would incorporate its trotting movement.

For our second idea, we were thinking of doing an immersive experience of what the zebra face on a daily basis. This will be an accurate representation of being pecked by the Oxpeckers, where the user would stand in the centre of our model, and the spine bone will have the woodpecker mechanism pecking behind the user. The legs will be a simplified version of the horses anatomy.

The said body cast:

 

 

 

Conclusion,

In the end, both of us decided to stick to idea two simply because it is easier to execute with our tight dateline. More importantly, we wanted to explore further and create something more original than the Jansen model which is already provided for on the internet. We went forward to do some prototyping to get more ideas about our model.

Prototyping:

Miss Cheryl pointed out that the “beak” of this prototype is too sharp, so changing it would be important. Surprisingly, the mechanism works easily. The marble is good enough to act as a proper weight for the item to drop down the pole as well.

We used a

The anatomy of the leg have been posted before, but here is the GIF again because we used it for a reference.