Some of my favorite links
It’s hard to find legitimate links to automata makers (and search engines are getting worse and worse at returning relevant results), so I’ve started compiling a list of links to my favorite artists and resources that I use all of the time.
If you like the kind of things you found on my website, I can’t wait for you to see these other artists as well
All of these links will open in a new tab, so you don’t have to use your browser’s back button to get back to this list
People I follow
- Cabaret Mechanical Theater (www.cabaret.co.uk). My journey started here.
- Automata Magazine (automatamagazine.com). Home of the Automata Magazine and the forum for the same. I highly recommend getting a subscription (you get access to every back issue and the forum). I’ve written an article myself and really enjoy the articles from all of the different automata makers from around the world.
- Oliver Pett (Website Mechanical Creations) who was my original inspiration and helped get me started with the right resources.
- Dave Goodchild (Instagram @antikythera_man) who has been a huge influence on what kind of automata artist I want to become and who mailed me an impossible to find book about puppetry from the UK.
- Rob Ives (www.robives.com) a mostly paper automata maker that I admire a lot.
There are a lot more that only appear to have social media accounts that I don’t have handy direct links to. I’ll try to add more to this list as I have time.
Resources I use
- Wood gear template generator (woodgears.ca) One of the most useful tools I own for creating gears of all sorts to use in making automata. There’s a free version you can use directly from the website or you can buy the program (like I did) for a super reasonable fee.
- Geneva gear drive generator (benbrandt22.github.io/genevaGen) A Geneva drive gear generator.
- Motion Gen (motiongen.io) A tool for finding the right mechanism for moving things. I have not learned how to use this site yet, but it came highly recommended from other automata makers, so it’s in my list to learn about