For some reason the other day I felt like I need to model something. So I went to my basement and digded through 3 or 4 bins of old toys and I wound up with three; Leonardo Ninja Turtle with spinning arm action, Old original mini transformer, and Nickelodeon Hand Clapper from McDonald’s I think. I ruled out the Ninja turtle from the beginning, it was just to play with, and went with the Hand Clapper.
It took me about me a while to get the base of it done. I tired to model this the more correct way rather then my normal quick way of cutting everything using booles. Adding some details and getting the edges right took another hour or so. I was going to keep adding more detail to make it as close to the toy as I could be then I got the Idea for some Xpresso and finished quickly and jumped into that. That might have been the reason I didn’t model the hands ( model from turbosquid ).
The Xpresso in this project is not too complicated, I liked all the moving parts (trigger, applause sign & hands) together so they move in tandem with each other like the toy does. I also have an automatic switch that allows the hand to clap on their own without any keyframes. Originally I had this setup planning to use if statements to switch it and increment the value, then I found this forum post which showed an easier way. All you have to do is choose the speed and range you want it to clap and hit play. You can also adjust the curve to create some unique claps. There are switches for high quality as well.
That’s pretty much it. You can download the model with the Xpresso setup and use it anyway your like. I’m rendering out an animation with it and will post it when it is finished.