This is the head which I designed and carved this weekend. The character is called Sk8er Dude. He's an IT nerd and social media influencer. He's camped out at Loch Ness to try to spot Nessie. Unfortunately his phone keeps pinging with tex messages, Facebook notifications, etc. Inevitably, as soon as he looks down to read his phone, Nessie rears up from the loch, waves and does goofy things before diving back down into the deep.
The head is about 2 inches tall and carved from basswood. I left the 'handle' attached so I have something to hold and keep my hand well away from the Stanley knife which I carved 95% of this with. I strop the Stanley knife frequently which keeps it super sharp. I was able to use it because the figure is so small and predominantly convex.
It's a different style to my normal one. It's based on a simple geometric shape - a funnel with a baseball hat on! I decided to try this because many famous automata are very simply carved and because I may need to write a series of articles on wood carving for beginners. These will appear in future editions of Automata Magazine.
The drawing below is to scale. The grid is 1-inch. feel free to have a go at trying to carve it yourself. Let me know if you'd like me to write a 'how to' to explain how I went about carving it.
I'll post further pictures of this project as work progresses.

Here's a way to make a knee (or elbow) joint using a couple of screw eyes and a brass Chicago screw.
​It's quite a bit quicker to make than a traditional mortise and tenon joint. I could have used a nut and bolt instead of the of the Chicago screw, but I think this looks a bit nicer.