Idea recap:

We want a tuba player to wear a cape with lots of eyes on it. Some of the eyes are sewn on and others will be moving around. We want this to be slightly creepy.

Project Update:

We tried making one eyeball pop out of the fabric and look in one direction. Below are a few videos we took of the prototype. Overall, it was a success. The eyeball moved exactly how we would like it to. We made a small apron to test the movement of the eyeball and see how it would come out of the cape. One problem we had was trying to make it come out of the fabric and then go back in as if nothing happened. We tried 3 different hole designs.

  1. We first tried the x-shaped hole design. It worked well in the beginning but at one point, the fabric gets caught in the eyeball area and doesn’t lay flat anymore.

2. We then tried making a square-like hole. This works, the eyeball comes out and goes back in. However, it is hard to see if you don’t look from below.

3. Lastly, we tried just cutting a circle and having no fabric directly in front of the eyeball. This also works and does not affect the movement of the eyeball. The only thing is that people can see the eyeball before we want to show them.

We will continue to play around with different hole shapes to see what works best.

Image of the apron (final product will be a cape)

Eyeball design:

We reshaped a foam ball to fit in the hole of the container. We made two circular inflatables that are connected in the center so that they would push the eyeball outwards more when inflated. We also wrote a program that would inflate air (making the eyeball pop out) and then deflate so that the eyeball can return back into the container. We also taped a piece of string to the eyeball and container so that the eyeball would turn in one direction once the inflatable is fully inflated.

This is how it turned when pumped by hand: