The Tenta-Neck

The first thing I decided to make for this project is a prototype for a neck for my bird - the area which is currently troubling me the most. My first logical stopping point is a model that has a lot of similarities to a biological neck, with a strong spinal column surrounded by elastic 'tendons' and 'ligaments'. The wooden prototype I made for this works fantastically, having a nice spring and jiggle to it, and was a simple case of cutting and sanding wooden blocks and MDF circles to make a basic, repetitive neck.

However, when I scaled this neck up to a full size, things didn't run so smoothly. Whilst the neck was highly flexible and moved very naturally, it wasn't good at taking weight at all, and almost entirely relied on the wearer to support it. Whilst this is fine in a test run of a few minutes, it seems that this could get tiring very quickly - and such, I must find an alternative solution. Whilst it is interesting to have elastic creating tension in the neck, it also puts a lot of pressure on the plates which hold it together. Over time, this may result in snapping. The prototype is made out of foam board and styrofoam; the foam board sounds light, but is actually fairly weighty, and whilst the styrofoam is incredibly light it is susceptible to being pressed into other shapes which would effect the shape and movement of the neck, or even forcing the elastic out of it. It feels like this kind of layout would be very effective for a body part which has to hang and rock freely - an elephant's trunk springs to mind - it doesn't seem to be appropriate for a structure which needs to support itself. It feels like I need a stronger and more industrial neck to place my Dodo's head on top of.