Happy New Year to you all! I've had a peaceful and relaxing time with friends and family. It's been great, now I've returned to the cutting board refreshed and reinvigorated.

I've got loads of new plans for new models and new idea for the website. Should be a fun year!

I'm starting off by creating an animated character model that uses the double crank mechanism. I think it'll be a fruitful mechnism that'll be a good base for many different mechanisms. I'm starting off with this octopus. This is the first draft, quite a few changes of scale and layout need making for the next version but as a proof of concept I'm pleased with it! The double crank make for an interesting movement. The legs, connected to the outer pushrod, swish downwards then after a small delay the body rises up. The result is a realistic fluid motion just like the real thing.