A commission. Figures carved from lime wood and the mechanism is American cherry wood. The basis of this automaton comes from my pigeons/doves series.
The figures were designed in Blender, a 3D graphics package, using various stock models that have been combined and adapted to produce look- alikes of the commissioner. The figures were carved on a Roland MDX40A CNC prototyping machine and took several hours to mill.
The action owes a lot to Surfing Dog by Keith Newstead. Not entirely accurate but still convincing.
The commissioning process involved the commissioner describing their idea and also deciding a budget. I then produced an outline sketch with an indication of movement, size etc. Once this was agreed the work took about 4 weeks to complete involving several iterations to produce the final result.
This automaton is 17cms high.