9 Tim Burton's Cat Beast

[Howlrunner]

I'm toying vaguely with the idea of building the cat beast from "9" (at the very least I want it's head and neck sections), so I thought I'd start gathering decent reference together in one place as I know that others may also want to build him.

So, as this is supposed to be made from found bits and pieces, can anyone identify parts? Eyes? Specific speaker in mouth?

My first question though is, what kind of cat skull is used?

Is it a domestic cat, as some people have said, or is it a lynx/bobcat? Is there even that much difference in shape between the two?

 

[BGHUNTER]

From the looks the2 skulls are very similar ,
of cause each one varies but most feline skulls seem to look close through species

 

[Dutchman]

I'd go for domestic, altough lynx is pretty much the same shape, its a bit bigger.

 

[chuckyAPP]

I'm sure we can get those parts identified. I searched a while thru doll parts for that speaker but couldn't find it. The other parts seen easier, like the compass and the pocket knife in the legs. The finger joints look like pieces from stop motion armetures, and the only real bones on that skeleton appear to be the skull and pelvis.

 

[Ramiel]

The speaker looks like omething you could find inside earphones (not the ones that you put inside your ear, the larger ones of course!) or old thelephones.
The left eye looks like one of those small webcam, while the other one looks like stripped down flashlight (just the mirrored cone, light and glass lens).

 

[G17RDY]

Woah, huge amount of parts to identify there, big task indeed!

If you do tackle the project, best of luck!

 

[Howlrunner]

I decided on a bobcat skull for the cat beast - it's only about 2cm longer than a domestic cat and has the almost-touching pieces of bone at the back of the eye socket (that are missing from the domestic cat cast I found). The bobcat also has more of a squared/thicker lower jaw (as evident in the first two production drawings) and longer canines. Plus it just subtly looks more intimidating.

Main thing I want to ID first is the red eye housing. A webcam is a good suggestion. Anything else?

 

[Howlrunner]

I found a fantastic collection of concept art from 9 that someone gathered together. Some great reference for the Cat Beast:

 

[chuckyAPP]

They eyes look like terminator endo eyes, just cant see what they could be practically.

 

[Howlrunner]

OK, I got myself a bobcat skull and I've been working on this on and off for the past few weeks and have finally got the head finished!

Here's a few more reference pics I took (I had others that show the other head details better - like where the wires exit the back of the skull - but they were lost when I had to recover my laptop :angry):

And here's the finished head. All of the robotic components (both eyes, speaker in the mouth, bladed eye guard, etc) had to be made from scratch using styrene sheet, bottle caps, acrylic domes, tubes, resistors, paper towel holder tops, and anything else I could lay my hands on. The searchlight eye uses an ultrabright blue LED:

Still have to work out how to make it's metal neck, and then I'll think about whether I want to try to tackle the rest of the body or not.

 

[Laser Brain]

Very cool. Great idea. I loved 9.

 

[SonOfPumpkinhead]

Well done!

 

[sanityattack]

I'm not a fan of Burton, but your build of that design is amazing.

 

[Dutchman]

This looks absolutely incredible, would love to see you do the whole build.
Great job so far! :thumbsup

 

[Craig24]

Amazing work, Well played

 

[TJackFx]

That looks awesome! I can totally picture something like that perched above my mantle, lol.