# Giant Talking Skeleton



## Jekyll-labs (Jul 28, 2021)

I made this guy last year. He is basically a large carved face blank that I can project on to. (For reference the tombstone is 5ft tall)


















I used Adobe Character Animator to make an animated skeleton puppet using my face that can be projected onto the head. A raspberry pi looks for triggers (PIR and touch) and then projects an appropriate video. It worked pretty well and could be a nice technique for someone looking to customize the singing pumpkins routine.






For next year, I’d like to be a little more interactive. Character animator can animate the puppet on-the-fly on my Windows PC. I’d like to find a way to screen cast the puppet onto the head, so the skeleton can have live conversations with passerbys. I’ve debated trying to run a live screencast to YouTube then playing that stream, but it seems maybe simpler to initiate a zoom call with screen sharing to the Pi. I can SSH into the raspberry pi, but not log in directly without difficulty.

Thoughts anyone?


----------



## Hallowed31 (7 mo ago)

Jekyll-labs said:


> I made this guy last year. He is basically a large carved face blank that I can project on to. (For reference the tombstone is 5ft tall)
> 
> View attachment 22194
> 
> ...


I don't remember offhand, but isn't it possible to bypass all the login security stuff on boot on the rasp pi? That's one of the options on a retropie, could that apply to yours?


----------



## langolier (May 21, 2011)

Jekyll-labs said:


> I made this guy last year. He is basically a large carved face blank that I can project on to. (For reference the tombstone is 5ft tall)
> 
> View attachment 22194
> 
> ...


Hi. What projector did you use. First, it looks great. But some of the projectors I've bought in the past suck. Your's seems to project a nice brightness even when there's lights around. Thanks, Bill


----------



## Jekyll-labs (Jul 28, 2021)

langolier said:


> Hi. What projector did you use. First, it looks great. But some of the projectors I've bought in the past suck. Your's seems to project a nice brightness even when there's lights around. Thanks, Bill


Thanks! I would really only turn the projector on at dusk. I think that the main help was that it was only 6ft away from the head, so the head took up the entire height of the “screen.”










This is the projector I used.










I bought a few for $15 each a few years ago. Looks like AliExpress has them now for $30-40.


----------



## Jekyll-labs (Jul 28, 2021)

Hallowed31 said:


> I don't remember offhand, but isn't it possible to bypass all the login security stuff on boot on the rasp pi? That's one of the options on a retropie, could that apply to yours?


Yeah, logging into it isn’t the issue. The challenge is more either a) live streaming my desktop to the local network or b) using SSH to remotely initiate a full screen video chat that appears on the main projector.


----------



## Hallowed31 (7 mo ago)

Jekyll-labs said:


> Yeah, logging into it isn’t the issue. The challenge is more either a) live streaming my desktop to the local network or b) using SSH to remotely initiate a full screen video chat that appears on the main projector.


I'm not very experienced with Rasp Pi, but maybe VNC? Would that do what you need? Other than that suggestion, that's all I've got for Rasp Pi


----------



## Daphne (Oct 18, 2006)

Very cool!


----------



## BunchOfHocusPocus (May 23, 2012)

Wow, I like it! It's very cool!

I like how you chose an 80's song.


----------

