Animatronic Raven

Ever since I was a kid riding the Haunted Mansion, I've always wanted an Animatronic Raven.

I was inspired to finally build one in 2009 after seeing another haunter on the web who created his own raven, www.socalhalloween.com, but knew I'd need to come up with a simpler solution.

I started with a "GreenHead Gear Flocked Crow Decoy" from Cabela's.

It is hollow black plastic, and with its flocking, looks fairly realistic.

I cut the head, beak, and body apart with a Dremel tool.

The legs were sculpted using "Magic Sculpt" which air dries very hard, but you need to sculpt

quickly. The bottom and all around the neck area of the bird is a fake fur that is attached with

Velcro to allow easy access to the innards in the event of a servo failure. Some additional fur and feathers complete the look. So far, The total cost for all the parts was around $425.00, and I spent about three weeks tinkering in my spare time to complete it.

I purchased four servos and a Servo Recorder/Playback Controller from Servo City.

This device allows the servos to be "puppeteered" and the action recorded and played back.

I built a support structure for the servos using a universal joint, servo holders, and parts

from an erector-set-like toy car kit.

The cables for the servos all run through the legs, and the raven is securely

attached to a wooden board for stability.

The four servos give the raven four motions, head left/right and head up/down,driven by two servos driving the universal joint, beak open/close from a smaller servo in the head, and body up/down

from the servo in the rear.

The beak servo is animated by the raven sound effects via a picoTalk from Fright Ideas.

This Site is to showcase the personal work of HAUNT1000 and is not affiliated with The Walt Disney Company.

Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris, and all Haunted Mansion characters and artwork are

copyrighted and/or are trademarks of the Walt Disney Company / Disney Enterprises.