Blog · The record

Fifteen faces
to get to one.

This is the workshop log behind Elva — the part of the story that usually gets thrown away. Before a face can hold eye contact in a real room, it has to survive fourteen versions that did not.

Here we keep the whole path in the open: the CAD packing where thirty-one motors fight for the volume of a human skull, the printed jaws tested on the bench, the character studies that failed, the first skinned head driven from a Python console — and the one face we finally kept. Shown in the order the work actually happened, nothing tidied up after the fact.

Build log CAD → print → skin 15 faces · 1 kept
Phase I

Fit the mechanism to a skull.

Draw the likeness, then fit every motor inside it. If the packing fails here, silicone will not save the face.

Three CAD views of the same skull: solid likeness, transparent mechanism, tooled mesh

Design, mechanism, mesh

Three views of one skull: the likeness, the motors that must fit inside, and the surface that will be tooled.

Transparent CAD of a face packed with eye, brow and jaw actuators

Motors in a human volume

The shell made transparent. Twelve actuators in the eyes, thirteen in the mouth, competing for the same few centimetres.

Side-profile CAD with the skull divided into colour-coded mechanical modules

Packaging the modules

Brow, mid-face, jaw, neck. The mechanism can be dense. It cannot fight the outline of a head.

Phase II

Print it until the mouth can move.

Drawings do not prove clearance. Printed linkages do. The mouth is tested on the bench, in the open, before anyone talks about skin.

A desktop 3D printer producing a white mechanical part on the lab floor

Print, check, reprint

Parts come off a desktop printer the same afternoon they are drawn. Iterate in hours.

Open 3D-printed jaw and tooth mechanism driven by a micro servo

The mouth, still on the bench

Jaw, teeth, a nine-gram servo, ball joints. Thirteen degrees of freedom in the mouth start as linkages that have to miss each other.

White printed skull packed with servos, teeth and a bundle of ribbon cable

An open skull of servos

Printed bone, motors at the brow and jaw, ribbon down the neck. Nothing is covered yet, so a collision cannot hide.

Phase III

Prove expression before locking a likeness.

A human likeness is a late decision. First the skin has to wrinkle and the eyes have to hold. Several heads failed on the same table; they stay in the record.

A wired character-study head held above a workshop desk

A character study, in the hand

An expressive head, not the product likeness. If this skin cannot crease and these eyes cannot hold, a human face will not either.

Workshop bench with several silicone heads, a bare skeleton and loose wiring

Several likenesses, one bench

Female, male, a character study, the bare skeleton, a scrap of skin. The next face was taught by the ones on this table.

A red-haired study head on the bench among wires, a spare ear and tools

Hair, still among the parts

A head that looks finished, next to a spare ear and a nest of cable. Finish and mechanism share the table until the packing is right.

Phase IV

Skin the motors.

Silicone is snapped to the frame so it can come off. Then the skinned unit is driven from a terminal, live, with the wires still showing.

A snap fastener going through silicone skin onto the internal frame

Skin, snapped to the frame

A fastener through silicone onto the mechanism. The skin can be removed; the motors stay. Tissue has to ride the linkage.

Bald silicone head on the bench with a live control GUI on the monitor behind it

First skinned unit, driven live

Bald silicone, neck still open, a Python console matching the motors. Software and skin on the same desk.

Phase V

Arrive at one face.

White bust, black collar, a face that can sit on a desk. Hair comes last. This is the unit the fourteen before it were for.

Bald Elva head on a white glossy bust, standing on the lab carpet

The shell language

Bald, on a white bust, on the lab floor. No longer a mask in a clamp.

Current Elva unit with brown hair on a white bust, sitting on an office desk

The current face, at a desk

Hair, a white bust, a keyboard. The unit that can sit on a desk and stay there.

Three-quarter close of the current Elva face, brown hair, black collar, white bust

Close: the face that stayed

Three-quarter. Eyes, skin, collar. This is the one we kept.

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