Leering Prop
Credit for this idea goes to Mr. Macabre and his King Leer. He was nice enough to send me pics of how he did his prop, then I made my own version using PVC and a lightweight motor from an animated yard display animal. The prop swings his head back and forth (side to side) with its neck craned over the top of a tombstone,like he's watching traffic go by.
Video
The first step I did was take a spare piece of plywood and screwed a 2X4 to it. The height of the 2x4 will depend on how tall a tombstone you'll be using. The head will be peering over so you want it to be shorter than the tombstone, so it can be hidden. The 2x4 we used was about 16 inches tall.

Into the 2x4 I placed a couple of eye screws with a diameter large enough for the PVC to fit through. You want it tight enough it won't wiggle too much, but not too tight where it can't easily rotate. Then to give the 2x4 a little more support, I put a shorter length of 2x4 screwed in front of it.


The PVC lengths are going to depend on how tall you need the prop to be to peer over your tombstone. The other variable is what kind of motor you're using, and how you choose to mount it. With PVC it's better to make it too long than too short, because it's easy to chop some off. But here's what we used:

  • A flat metal arm
    • We found this at Home Depot, but PVC would probably be easier to use. It was about 9.5 Inches, and is the orange line in the above picture.
  • 11 inch length of PVC, shown in yellow
  • 17 inch length of PVC, shown in green
  • 13 inch length of PVC, shown in red
  • Short stubby piece of PVC for your wighead to hook onto, shown in blue
  • Two 45 degree elbow PVC connectors
  • One "T" PVC connector
  • Rounded PVC cap
  • One more short length of PVC whose length should be figured when mounting the motor. It's shown in purple


Now connect all the PVC together as shown in the picture. The green piece is going to go up through the eye screws in the 2x4. The PVC cap goes on the bottom to reduce friction when it's turning. The vertical and diagnal PVC lengths will likely want to be adjusted depending on your tombstone and the mask you use etc. Taller or wider/thicker tombstones you'll want longer PVC.


The next step is to work on the motor. Note: I would wait on mounting the motor to the base board, until you can experiment with where to put it.
As I said, the motor we used was one of those ones you find in the animated xmas deer. It's not the strongest motor, but this prop doesn't put much stress on it, so it works well. The crank arm was too short to get enough turn so I jimmy rigged a longer one. I zipped tied a length of PVC to the crank arm, used hot glue to try to take out the extra wiggle, and then wrapped it in duct tape for good measure. Again, since there's not much strain put on the motor and the crank arm, it works fine. Note that the longer the crank arm you attach the wider movement for the prop. This is another thing you'll probably want to experiment with to see how much motion you want.



Next I drilled a hole in the PVC Crank arm to connect it to the metal arm. I'll have to look at what length of bolts I used, but it just has to be long enough to pass through the PVC arm and the metal arm. I noticed when doing this, that the metal arm needed to be higher than the crank arm, because when the arm is rotating it ends up going completely underneath the metal arm. So to gain a little height, I just threw in a little piece of PVC (maybe 3/4" long) in between the crank arm and the metal arm. I placed washers in between each of these sections as well.

Next you attach the other end of the metal arm to the horizontal piece (the yellow one) using another bolt and nut, with a washer or two in between.

At this point you can plug in the motor while holding it in your hand and get an idea of what's supposed to happen. Moving the motor around you can find the place on the base board that would work the best. Ours you'll see from the picture was set kind of off to the side of the mechanism.


Once I found the optimal spot for my motor I screwed another 2x4 to elevate my motor a little. To hook the motor to the 2x4 I just used a whole bunch of hot glue. Another jimmy rig, but it seems to work. This is the point where I had to adjust the variable PVC length (purple). What you're shooting for is to have the entire rotating motion on one plane. This means you don't want the yellow PVC too be too high or low in relation to the crank arm on the motor. Not sure if that makes sense, but you'll probably see what I mean if you plug it in to test it. So just trim the "purple" PVC so you get a nice flat rotating motion, then you should be in good shape. From here you can just make adjustments to the lengths of the "green" and "Red" pieces of PVC to get the desired look. Find yourself a wig head and a mask you like; oh and a tombstone, and there you have it.


Another angle to look at.