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I have been working on a floating eye prop that came from some discussions on using a shop vac blower
to suspend balls in mid air. I though the shop vac idea had a couple of flaws. One flaw is the noise of the shop vac. It is simply too noisy for the confined area that I wanted to run
the prop. The other was the problem of TOTs possibly disturbing the floating balls since there is nothing but air suspending them.
I thought of another alternative. Using a clear plastic tube to hold the ball was my first thought. I
immediately remembered seeing those clear plastic florescent light (tube) holders (storage containers) that you can buy at hardware stores. I found a whopping 8-foot tall one that
allows a Ping-Pong ball to travel its length without difficultly.
To propel the Ping-Pong ball, I decided to use a 2-way air valve (solenoid valve) attached to an air compressor. A picture of
the beginnings of the props shown below. I'm starting to think of a lot of different ideas surrounding this prop and have decided to create a fire-breathing monster. I haven't got all
of the details worked out, but the idea will be something along these lines.
I figure I can hide the base of the air valve and support with a Halloween mask. The mask's face will point upwards and the tube
will look like it's coming out of the monster's month. In the dark, you won't be able to see the clear tube. Inside the tube, the Ping-Pong ball will be painted with florescent red paint
or maybe contain a LED with a small battery; still thinking about this. The kicker will be the simulated fire. I bought some plastic fiber optic cable and some light sequence boards
from American Science and Surplus and plan to use a strand of red (clear) Christmas lights to alternate lights conducting different strains of the fiber to make it appear the fire
is alive. The whole thing is to be triggered using a switch mat. When the prop is triggered, the ball will shoot (float) out of the mouth of the monster and the fiber will tingle
with red light, hopefully simulating fire. Other ideas are to add a heater fan to help the fire feel real and sound of some sort.
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