V.I.N.CENT: Holographic Style A.I Assistant and Video Screensaver Display.

Disclaimer: Full transparency (pun intended), this is not a real holographic project, but rather a project that has a holographic ‘effect’ using light and glass reflection.

Okay with that out of the way… Welcome dear reader.

V.I.N.CENT….. Vital Information Necessary CENTralized. A utility robot who served aboard the spacecraft ‘USS Palomino’ in the 1979 Disney movie ‘The Black Hole’ and voiced by Roddy McDowell. I like the movie, but i fell in love with this little robot, and this project was designed solely with this little guy in mind.

The Project:

A two dimensional animated A.I assistant with his own personality running on a Windows tablet PC and mirrored onto a sheet of glass to give a 2D holographic effect housed in a thin yet sturdy display stand. The stand is completely black in colour so it is less visible in a dark environment making the holographic effect stand out more. The images of Vincent I drew/painted using Microsoft Paint 3D, then animated the images using Adobe Express, converted into GIFs, and then using a sound responsive program so when there is no sound, a GIF of Vincent subtly moves about in ‘Idle Mode’, then when he speaks a response to my query, a second animated Vincent GIF is displayed in ‘Talk Mode’.

For the assistant interaction I use my phone or an android tablet with either his own GPT personality or an A.I assistant installed, the phone is connected to a Bluetooth speaker fixed to the display frame, and the voice response comes through the speaker located directly next to the mic on the tablet to start the talking animation. The speaker/mic placement helps almost reduce false ‘Talk Mode’ triggers from ambient noise, and with the mic levels set to a certain position, every time there is a silent break between a spoken response, the ‘Idle Mode’ GIF will briefly display (think of a mouth opening and closing when someone speaks).

And as a fun bonus, this project also has a video screensaver/wallpaper I made with different Vincent animations all put together so the little guy appears to move about randomly in the background when the voice assistant isn’t used. This is all made using free software and cheap materials… that’s including the tablet PC too.

And I chose Vincent for a few reasons mentioned below, but also partly because the little fella was ideal for this project as he was a robot that hovered and moved around off the ground, so having him hovering around doing his thing on a see through display (holographic style) was perfect.

If you haven't already, check out the video to see what it can do.

The Inspiration:

I first saw The Black Hole on TV around 1981 when I was about 8 years old followed by Star Wars: A New Hope a year or so later, so this was my first memorable Sci-Fi movie. I remember it being a cool movie although I didn’t really understand the plot much at the time, but I remember that I enjoyed the action… and I really loved that robot. And it was actually Vincent that sparked my deep ongoing interest in Sci-Fi and robotics (and the reason to watch Star Wars for the first time when that came on TV), and Vincent also the main reason I watched the movie multiple times. I watched the movie again when I was a bit older and a bit wiser where I finally understood the movie plot and finding a new appreciation for it, especially for the special effects and prop work which for its time were fantastic... and I still just really loved that little robot, so much so I wanted to make one.

I made a couple of my favourite full size operational robots like my take on K-9 and my own Astromech droid based on R2:D2, but I never had, or at the time of writing this don’t have the room to display a life size Vincent robot, or even a half size one, but I really wanted one in my life as I love the design, colour scheme and characteristics of this guy plus all of the fond memories of the time that he evokes. Then comes the Instructables Fandom contest which sparked my enthusiasm and started to get my creative juices flowing,.. so thinking outside the box a little and combining my every day use of A.I assistants, my enjoyment of using things in a way not intended for their original purpose, having the challenge of hopefully making something unique, and hopefully having a cool version of one of my all time favourite robots, I came up with a plan. You may have seen them, but the first time I saw the upside down pyramid of clear acrylic placed on a phone or tablet screen giving a holographic effect I thought was pretty cool yet simple, so I wanted to use that kind of technique to display a 2D Vincent and give my virtual assistants a body/face as well as having my own animated space saving Vincent robot display.

R2:D2, K-9, Bender, Jonny 5 to name a few… these a some of my favourites, but Vincent was my first so he will always have a special place in my heart.

The Making:

1. Two black A4 size picture frames, one for the base and one for the tablet to rest on, already painted and also comes with a piece of glass. I could have made a frame, but no need to reinvent the wheel here and it also works out cheaper.
2. The picture frames would be separated by two thin yet strong side supports to take the weight of the tablet, and the glass fitted in between them using glass cabinet door hinges that pivot to adjust the glass angle.
3. A Bluetooth speaker would be placed on top of the display directly next to the tablet's mic.
4. The pictures of Vincent I would draw/paint myself from scratch using draw/paint software. I could have downloaded a picture online and edited it, but this is a labour of love project and wanted to draw Vincent from scratch myself as that would be part of the fun.
5. The pictures would then be animated and saved as an Idle and Speak GIFs, then additional animations would be stitched together using a simple video editing program and saved for a video wallpaper.
6. Then finally connect my phone to the Bluetooth speaker, set up the sound responsive program, place the tablet onto the frame… then let the fun begin.

An interesting project that is fun, entertaining and cheap. Lets get to it...

Tools:

1. Hobby knife
2. Pencil
3. Ruler
4. Pliers
5. Hammer
6. Nail gun (or hammer and tack nails)
7. Hot glue gun
8. Hacksaw
9. Cutting board
10. Black marker pen
11. Sanding block (or paper)
12. Cross head or straight head screwdriver (for the glass brackets)
13. Drill/driver with small drill bit and screwdriver bit and screws
14. Computer (for the Vincent drawings)

Software:

1. MS Paint 3D (or your chosen draw/paint software to make the Vincent images)
2. MS Movie Maker (or your chosen video editing software for the video screensaver)
3. Adobe Express (for the animations)
4. Ezgif.com (video to GIF converter)
5. Veadotube Mini for the Windows tablet (unfortunately there is no Android version of this sound responsive pngtuber software, but it does work with Windows, Linux, macOS and macOS Intel)
6. Video wallpaper player for Windows (Lively Wallpaper is a good and free option, or a video player that can play looped videos like VLC Player)
7. ChatGPT or similar for a speaking A.I assistant with a custom personality prompt (Alexa for PC and CoPilot are also options I also use).

Materials:

1. 2 x A4 size picture frames in black
2. Some small pieces of MDF (or similar wood)
3. Glass cabinet door brackets
4. Bluetooth speaker
5. Black paint or black vinyl wrap
6. Large sheet of Foamcore (preferably black)
7. 10 inch Windows tablet, a cheap second hand one will do. The one I got I picked up for £35UK/$47US

The material links I have listed above are U.K links, so they are only meant for reference so you can purchase similar items in your location.

List of the Following Steps:

1. Step 1: The Design: My final designs for the stand with measurements.
2. Step 2: Creating the Vincent Artwork: Creating the Vincent images using paint/draw software.
3. Step 3: Animating Vincent: Turning the Vincent pictures into animated MP4 videos.
4. Step 4: Converting Vincent MP4s Into GIFs: Making the MP4 videos into GIF file copies.
5. Step 5: Making the Video Wallpapers: Making the video wallpapers for when you're not using assistant mode.
6. Step 6: Making the 'retracting head' videos: An optional step for animating Vincent's head to go up and down.
7. Step 7: Making the Display Stand, Part 1: Building the display stand frame.
8. Step 8: Making the Display Stand, Part 2: Building the other parts of the stand.
9. Step 9: The Setup: Setting up the tablet and display frame.
10. Step 10: Conclusion: Some final thoughts.

Build Time: (This is how long it took me. Your results may vary).

1. 3 hours to make the stand.
2. 9 hours to draw Vincent.
3. 11 to 12 hours to make all the GIFs and MP4 animations, and to set up the tablet.
4. Just over 2 days to compose and publish this Instructable.

I have given all of the instructions to make the artwork, GIFs and MP4s below which could be use for not just creating your own Vincent, but for any character you wish to use. But just in case digital artwork might not be in your arsenal of awesome skills and abilities, I have attached supporting files that you are more than welcome to download and use... because everyone should have a little V.I.N.CENT in their lives.

After tossing around a few ideas and making some sketches, I finally came up with a cheap, simple and a contemporary looking stand for Vincent to do his thing on. As I knew I was going to feature this on Instructables, I wanted the design to be easy to make using minimal tools and materials, and to be cost effective. So here is a breakdown of the overall stand design.

1. I would use two A4 sized inexpensive picture frames using the outer frames for the base and to hold the tablet PC, the glass I could use as the transparent display, use one of the hardboard backing panels to rest the tablet on, and there would be no need to paint them as they were already coloured.
2. I chose the colour black for the whole stand so it would be barely visible in a dark room and make the holographic effect be the only noticeable thing.
3. The front of the bottom frame would be facing up as this was the nicer looking side.
4. The front of the top frame would face down and house the tablet PC.
5. One of the picture frames backing card would be used to support the tablet. The middle would be cut out for the tablet's screen to be visible on the glass.
6. Two scrap pieces of 15mm MDF would make the side supports which would be fitted between the two frames.
7. The glass panel would fit into holes drilled half way up the side panels with pivoting brackets to adjust the glass angle if needed.
8. I front hinged foot rest would be fitted to the bottom frame to raise the front of the display up for better viewing angles if needed.
9. I would make a removable Foamcore lid to cover the back of the tablet for astetic purposes and to house the Bluetooth speaker.
10. Finally, I would do my best to draw Vincent using reference material found online, then animate them in two ways... GIFs for a talking avatar for A.I smart assistants, and MP4 videos to join together and make a video wallpaper to display to run in the background sitting on my desk or anywhere else I wanted to put Vincent. I actually started this project drawing Vincent first so that is how I organised the steps in this Instructable.

With the designs finalized, it's time to get to work.

This is the longest of all of the steps as this requires more work if making the pictures from scratch.

Before we start drawing, there's a couple of points to note. There's two ways to do the following few steps: either on the tablet PC we are going to use for the project, or on another computer that's easier to use for drawing/painting. I used my 17" laptop for the drawings, animations, GIF conversions and video editing, then transferred the finished files/folders over to the tablet as this was much easier doing all this on a larger machine.

As I mentioned previously, I used the now discontinued MS Paint 3D program as I still have a copy of it and I have used it for years, but there are of course other for feature rich paint/draw programs available such as Inkscape which is also free. So in this step I will be using MS Paint 3D as the example.

And one more thing... as our images are going to be displayed on a transparent glass sheet, think of the colour black as invisible. This is because the black won't reflect onto the glass so any black elements won't be seen. Vincent does have some black parts, so I made these parts grey so they can be seen better on the glass.

1. Before we do any drawing though, the very first thing to do before anything else is make some empty folders on our computer for an organised work flow. On your computer, go to 'Pictures' then make a new folder called Vincent. Open the folder and add some more new folders and name them 'Stills', 'Videos', 'GIFs', 'Video Wallpaper' and 'GIF Creator' (this one is optional as you will see in Step 5). Now we can get creative.
2. Open up your draw/paint program (MS Paint 3D for this example), open a new project and set your blank canvas in a portrait position and size it to the display resolution to your Windows tablet. For my tablet, the pixel resolution is 1280 pixels high and 800 pixels wide for example. Now select the 'Paint Fill' tool, set the colour to black, and fill the blank canvas to make it completely black.
3. (My final Vincent drawing was my 5th attempt trying to dial in on the best order of operation, and using pictures found the web for reference. Here is the best technique I ended up doing: See pictures for reference). Start by making the head and size it so there is nice sized black border all around the top and two sides to take into account the animated movements later. Use the '3 point curve' tool to make the subtle curves and the 'Line' tool and the 'Fill' tool under 'Brushes' for the head dome and face.
4. Now use the same techniques for the rest of the body and use the 'Circle' tool under '2D shapes' for the feet. The actual colour of Vincent's feet are black, so as mentioned above about black reflection, I made the feet grey.
5. Now start adding more layers of details for the claw and weapon compartments, lights, paneling etc. To make the light reflection shadowing around the chest areas, claw compartments and leg rings, use the 'Colour picker' tool, select the colour of the area you're working on, then change colour to a lighter shade. Now use a mixture of the 'Water colour' brush and 'Spray can' tools and start the shading in, changing the size of the brush and colour shading. Zoom the canvas in to make it larger to give you more control over detailing and gradient, and make use of the 'Undo' tool as much as you need. When you're doing it zoomed in, it will look rough, but once you zoom back out it should look good.
6. For the text decals I used a mixture of tools. For the main red text just under the face, I zoomed the canvas in to the writing area, then use a mix of 'Pixel pen', 'Pen' and 'Calligraphy pen' tools to make the writing. This took a long time, but it was worth it. For the rest of the text, open another instance of Paint 3D, select the 'Text' option, write the text then use the 'select' tool to surround the text, then select 'Make 3D'. Tilt the text back a bit, then copy it, go back to the Vincent project and paste the text to where it needs to go, resizing it as needed. The smaller text was originally black on the movie prop, but I opted for red to stand out on the transparent display.
7. With Vincent almost finished, two visual display units were to be added. Because in the movie Vincent didn't have any visual ques when he spoke (flashing lights, moving parts etc.) I chose to use some artistic license and make the original looking display as the 'Idle mode' image, and make a more colourful one for the 'Talk mode' image. To start with the idle mode display, open another instance of Paint 3D or save the Vincent project and start a new paint project, make the canvas black like before.
8. Then use the Square tool then make a square with a light grey outline and a dark green fill. Then using the 'Pen' tool and choosing a thickness that creates a small but visible dot, choose a light green colour and make a grid of the light green dots. Now change the pen colour to red and use the same process to make a waveform.
9. If you have two Paint 3D instances open, use the select tool, select the visual display, copy it, then go back to the Vincent picture and paste the visual display onto Vincent's chest, resizing it to fit correctly. If you are only using one instance of Paint 3D, crop the visual display, save the image, open up the Vincent image, the use the 'Insert' option to place the visual display image over Vincent's chest and resize it to fit. Save the Vincent picture as 'Vincent Idle' in your 'Vincent' > 'Stills' folder.
10. Now zoom in the Vincent picture canvas to only show the visual display, then use different coloured 'Pen' dots to make an audio spectrum display style image, or any image of your choice such as changing the green to red for example, then use the 'Save as' option, name the image as 'Vincent Talk' and save it in the 'Stills' folder.
11. Final thing, open up the images back up in Paint 3D, and make any final adjustments and clean up anything you think that's needed (see top tips for clean up).

Now we have the two Vincent images completed and saved, we can now start animating them.

Top tips:

When making your drawings, make sure to regularly save your work throughout just in case of an unexpected program closure or unresponsiveness and end up losing your work.

When doing some of the finer details, zoom the canvas close so it's pixelated. What you draw/paint might look rough and sometimes washed out when covering the pixels with colour, but when zoomed back out the images should look fine.

You don't have to use the text decals as they wont really be visible on the transparent display and either use small coloured lines or blocks, or leave them blank. But although they may not be all that visible, the details matter to me.

And when cleaning up edges or details, don't use the 'eraser' tool as it will take you back to the white canvas. So use the 'Pen' tool instead and if you have to erase say red off of green, use the colour picker tool, adjust the size of the pen thickness the start your erasing.

Of course if your digital painting and drawing skills are not so hot, you could skip stages 1 to 6 and use a ready made picture and do some light editing to change background colour to black and edit other elements that are black to a different colour. And of course you are more than welcome to use my Vincent images which I have included in the last two pictures above.

With our Vincent pictures made and ready to use, let's get the little fella moving. Adobe Express is the weapon of choice here as it has the basic animations needed for this project, and at the time of writing this, it's free. Another reason for using this was because not only did it have the animations I wanted, but one of the was a 360 degree spin which exactly what Vincent does in the movie so I was very pleased with that find. There is a paid for version that has more features and offers a free trial, but the free basic options are all that's needed.

1. Open Adobe Express > click the blue ‘Go to Adobe Express’ button > ‘Start from your content’ > double click on your Vincent 'Idle' picture to upload it > Click ‘Edit original image’ > and then click on the ‘Background Colour’ icon (the plain square icon which should be set to default white) and choose black.
2. Now click ‘Animation’ > ‘Loop’ > Scroll down to ‘Move’ > click ‘Bob’ > click ‘Bob’ again and move both sliders down to ‘1’ > test play it to see if you’re happy with it then press ‘Download’ (in the top right corner) > then click the blue ‘Download’ button below the formatting and resolution options. You can now open your downloads folder on your computer, then cut and paste it into your VINCENT folder and rename it ‘Idle Vid’.
3. You can now follow the above section again to animate the ‘Talk’ picture using the same ‘Bob’ option and use the exact same ‘Speed’ and ‘Intensity’ slider settings so both the talk and idle give movement speeds match for smooth transitions between the two.
4. You can finish of by adding other animations for the wallpaper/screensaver video.

The default timing (the length of the video) is set to 5 seconds thereabouts. This is perfectly long enough as this will loop perfectly for our needs in the next step, and for the video wallpaper we can add this as many times as needed in the video editor to run as long as we need. The small size will also help with quality when we convert the MP4 video into a GIF in the next step. So now we have our Vincent MP4 video folder filled, we can move to the next step.

Top Tips:

When animating in Adobe Express, double check the ‘Speed’ and ‘Intensity’ settings of your chosen animation to make sure the start and end points match otherwise you will get an unmatched, jittery animation that doesn't loop properly. SO either adjust the setting sliders of hover the computers pointer over the end of the video timeline and drag it to either extend or shorted the clip, test play it and make sure the start and end points match before you download.

And when I mention the ‘Bob’ animation in Adobe Express… that’s not to be confused with B.O.B, Vincent's battered and bruised counterpart robot buddy.

Now we will convert both the Vincent 'Idle Vid' and 'Talk Vid' MP4 videos into GIFs for the Veadotube Mini program.

1. Open the Ezgif website > select ‘Video to GIF’ > then ‘Choose file’ and select your ‘Idle Mode’ MP4 video > then Press ‘Upload video’.
2. When the video uploads, scroll down and leave all of the options as they are, except one. Click on the ‘Frame rate’ drop down menu then click on ‘33 (max 10 seconds)’. If you remember I mentioned earlier that the default video lengths for the Adobe Express videos we made earlier are about 5 seconds or so. This is good for us here as we can choose the highest 33fps rate available for the best quality for our GIF.
3. Now click ‘Convert to GIF’ and when the conversion is done, click ‘Save’.
4. Go to your computers ‘Downloads’ folder > rename the Gif conversion “Idle Gif” > right click the file and ‘Cut’ > then 'Paste' it into your Vincent ‘GIFs’ folder.
5. Now follow the above procedure for the ‘Talk Mode’ video MP4.

And we are done here as we only need the two GIFs for the A.I assistant avatar, and the rest of the MP4 videos can stay as they are.

Supporting files below. Unfortunately I couldn't upload the GIFs here for some reason, but you can use the Ezgif MP4 to GIF conversion or your preferred converter to convert the video files.

This is where we can have some fun making our video wallpaper/screensaver to give Vincent some fun animations that can run in the background on your desk or living space. To start this step, we will do a little more work with Adobe Express, then move onto the video editing. All we are doing here is the simplest form of video editing by adding in the clips we want, arranging them in the order we want, then saving it. No title cards, audio tracks, overlays effect or transitions, just a simple video making it as long as we want, but making the start and end points match for seamless looping. I used the now decommissioned Windows Movie Maker (yes, I do like the classics), as I managed to retain a copy of it, but any basic video editing software will work for this.

1. Follow the same sequence in stage 1 of step 2 to start a new Adobe Express project using the 'Vincent Idle' picture. Then click on 'Animations' then click on either the 'In', 'Loop' or 'Out' options.
2. Choose any of the available animations under the 'Move' and 'Scale' headings, change the specific animation settings such as changing speed, untick 'Fade', and tick 'End Outside Page'. For 'Loop' animations, if you change the durations, the looping may not match up. To fix this, click and drag the end of the timeline and drag it either way so the blue box matches the border of the picture (see the third attached picture and following GIF above) and that the movements match.
3. After every download, rename the video file to something easily recognizable, then select all of the downloads, cut them and paste them into your Vincent 'Videos' folder.
4. Now open up your video editing program. Start dragging/coping/inserting your videos into the timeline in the order you want. Having 'In's, 'Loop's, and 'Out's in an order that match will give the appearance of Vincent entering the screen, doing his thing, the exits the screen... then loops over again with different In, Loop, Out animations. Use the Vincent Idle still image and adjust the duration of how long it will be visible, and do the same with a blank black coloured still image, placing it in between exit and enter loops to make a brief pause between each one so they don't happen to fast.
5. Now, to make Vincent display as large as possible in portrait mode, you will need to select all of the video clips in the timeline, and rotate them 90 degrees, otherwise Vincent will appear large in landscape mode, but will shrink down in portrait mode (see top tips).
6. Test play the video and make any final rearrangements or edits you feel that's needed. Once you're happy with your video and length of it (don't forget that the video will loop over and over until you turn it off), save the video to your Vincent 'Video wallpaper' folder.

And we are done with the video wallpaper editing. Time to get our hands dirty (not literally as it's a clean build), and make the stand. The wallpaper in the YouTube video is a much shorter, squished up version of what I use solely to demonstrate the different animations. The full version I use is about an hour long with lone idle pauses in between each movement, and is set to loop over when the video ends.

Top tips:

Although I mentioned at the beginning of this step that there is no audio tracks added to the video, you could aways add some audio clips to the video of various sound effects if you wanted. But for something that plays in the background, this could end up being a little distracting... but you could always turn the volume down.

Again, as I mentioned that this is very basic editing, you can always use the split/splice tools to clean any clips that might not quite match up and remove the parts to make the clips join together seamlessly.

I mentioned about rotating the video clips to display correctly. You could actually rotate the images in your paint program first, then animate them. But the problem I thought I'd face was that some of the animations have a bunch of setting to play them in different directions, but others don't have the same options. So rotating the video clips within the video editor was the better solution.

Supporting video files attached below.

This will only be used in the video wallpaper so if you don’t want to do this, you can skip this step altogether… but this was a memorable feature I remember as a kid, so I had to add it in.

Now to make our own animation of one of Vincent’s signature moves… his retracting head. If you’re unaware, Vincent was able to retract his head into his body, much like a tortoise or a snail, and then raise his head up again. So to do this we will be making a GIF then converting it into an MP4 video, the reverse to what we did earlier. So to make the GIF, we need to make the frames and instead of drawing 24 or so Vincent pictures with his head in different positions, we will use a copy of the ‘Idle’ still picture and edit that instead.

We will start by making his head go down… but don’t worry and think we will have to make a load more frames to make his head go back up again… we will simply make one GIF/MP4 and reverse it. All will be explained below.

1. Start off by opening two instances of Paint 3D. I will refer to these as Instance 1 and Instance 2. Choose ‘New Project’ on both, then use ‘Insert’ to add a copy of the Vincent idle still to both instances. Use the ‘Pen’ tool with the colour set to black, then go over the whole head to delete it in instance 1, and do the same to delete Vincent's body in instance 2. Now follow the order of operation in the following stage...
2. On instance 2, click the ‘3-point curve’ tool and draw a line on the bottom of Vincent’s face, changing the line to black, adjust the thickness to your desired level, then put the outer two points of the line at each end of the face and drag the middle point down so the curved line covers a small layer of the bottom of the face (we will continue to do this all the way through).
3. Zoom out > click ‘Magic Select’ > drag the borders in around the head leaving a small black border > click ‘Next’ > untick ‘Autofill Background’ > then ‘Done’ > click ‘Copy’ > then open instance 1.
4. On instance 1, click ‘Paste’ and drag the head into position centering it on the top of the body as best as possible > click a black area > click ‘Save As’ and name it “1” and save it in the Vincent ‘GIF Creator’ folder > click ‘Undo’ so the head disappears > go to Instance 2 > click ‘Undo’ to undo the ‘Magic select’ action > then repeat the process over again to take off the next face layer to make frame 2.
5. Now we can make our GIF. Open Ezgif > click ‘GIF Maker’ > ‘Choose files’ > select your Vincent all of your frames > click ‘Open’ > then ‘Upload files’ and wait for them to upload. Scroll down and click ‘Make a GIF’ > and when the GIF is done, click ‘Save’.
6. Now scroll to the top of Ezgif and click ‘Video to GIF’ > just underneath that click ‘GIF to MP4’ > ‘Choose file’ > select the GIF we just made > click ‘Upload’ > ‘Convert GIF to MP4’ > Click ‘Save’. Now click ‘Reverse’ > ‘Reverse video’ > ‘Save’.
7. Now you can rename the two videos, cut and paste them into your Vincent folder and add them into your video wallpaper using your video editor.

Top tips:

If you want to change the video speed of the head going up and down, you can do this in Ezgif under ‘Speed’ and change the ‘Multiplier’ value, or change it in your video editor.

I ended up with 24 frames and the motion ended up fairly smooth, but if you wanted to spend more time and make around 33 frames using a thinner 3 point curve tool in your paint program, you will end up with an even smoother motion.

Naming the Vincent frames 1 2 3 4 etc. (or A B C D) will help create the GIF as the GIF creator will organize them numerically and alphabetically. You can also delete the frames when you are finished making the GIF and MP4, but keep the last one with the head down as you can use that still picture as a pause in the video wallpaper between the 'head down' and 'head up' clips.

NOTE: If you don't notice any speed difference when the GIF is created, play it from your downloaded file instead of running it on Ezgif as there seemed to be a play back issue (at time of writing this), but the speed change did take effect in the 'Save' download.

Supporting files for the 'Head up' and 'Head down' MP4s are below, and the GIF versions are included in the pictures above.

With a picture frame I am using, laying down the sides of the picture frames are 15mm high and 20mm wide.

1. Start by dismantling the picture frames, put the pieces to one side except for one glass panel and grab the pivot hinges.
2. The next thing is to move your cat out of the way if they decide to join you just as your about to get stuck in to your project. (Fluffy four pawed assistants are optional, but not really recommended).
3. Place the brackets with their foam glass protector inserts in place on to the glass making sure the pivot pin is about half way up the glass, and equal to each other. Tighten the screws only pinch tight so as not to crack the glass. Put to one side for now.
4. Now grab one of the backing panels from the picture frames and remove any bits like wall hanger clips and fold out stands. Gentilly pry them off with a screwdriver.
5. Measure the size of the tablet's actual display, mark out the measurements onto the panel so your cutout lines are centered, then use a sharp knife and metal ruler or cutting edge to repeatedly score the lines until it cuts through. Do all four cut lines and remove the center cutout (this is not needed).
6. Test fit the cut out panel on top of the tablet to make sure all of the screen is visible (if the cutout is a little large, it's not an issue if the tablet bezel is black). Put to one side for now.
7. Cut two pieces of 15mm MDF (5cm wide and 23cm tall), then vinyl wrap all four sides (not the top and bottoms), with black vinyl or paint with black paint (I wrapped mine with a wood grain effect vinyl I had left over from a previous project, but a small roll is very cheap).
8. Measure and mark the center of both pieces, then drill a hole through both. The drill but needs to be a slightly smaller diameter than the glass hinge pivot pin so it is a tight push fit with a gentil tap of a hammer.
9. Make a small pencil mark along both sides of the picture frames and do the same on both MDF pieces. Now add a small bit of glue to the bottom of one MDF piece, place it on your work surface facing up and hold it against the front edge of one of the picture frames which will be upside down .(use the other one for support). Then nail then together making sure the outside edges of the frame and MDF piece are flush and the pencil marks lined up.
10. Now grab the glass with the hinges, place one pivot hinge into the fixed side panel firmly pushing it in. Now grab the the other side panel and attach it to the other hinge pivot. Gentilly tap the side panel with a hammer to firmly push both pivot pins in as far as they will go, but not so hard as to risk breaking the glass. Now glue and nail the side panel down the same the other one.
11. Flip the stand over then glue and nail in the other picture frame, this time with the picture frames front facing down (as this will be the top of the display stand.

That is the main part of the stand done. The glass should be tight against the MDF side panels and have a stiff movement, enough for it to be moved and hold its position. Now you can switch the tablet on, transfer a Vincent still photo, a GIF or an MP4 onto the tablet, play the file and place the tablet into position. Put the lid on top, adjust the glass display angle, then stand back and check if everything is good (the darker the room, the better).

One thing to note for this testing, and for displaying the full assistant avatar gifs and video wallpaper is the orientation. The tablet obviously needs to be in portrait mode, but you need to lay the tablet down onto the stand with Vincent's head near the back of the stand (where the top part of the glass display is) or he will appear upside down. He might not mind, but you might.

Top tips:

Even though the side panels holding the glass are glued and nailed in place, the glass can still be removed if needed by loosening the pivot hinge screws, and sliding the glass out and in.

When cutting the two lengths of the MDF side panels, make sure that the ends are square. If they are not cut straight, when they are attached the top picture frame may not line up with the bottom one and look like it's leaning when looking at the stand from the front.

If you're using a nail gun, use a hammer to tap the nail heads flush if the don't drive all the way in.

While it was funny having my cat jump onto my work table and lay down JUST as I'm starting this project, please take caution with pets around where you may have sharp knife blades exposed or a hot glue gun switched on.

This part is about doing the small jobs to finish off the stand.

1. This is to stop the tablet moving about. With the tablet resting on its resting base cutout sitting in the top stand panel, and aligned perfectly so the screen is not obscured, measure the distance between the inner edge of the frame to the edge of the tablet at the back end of the stand. Mark and cut a length of Foamcore (or thick cardboard or similar), to fit in the gap, mark out where the mic and power sockets are. remove the strip, cut these sections out, colour in the Foamcore with a black marker pen (optional), then hot glue them into place.
2. Cut a further two strips, colour and glue to each side of the tablets resting base. All of this is to stop the tablet from moving about, and helps as a guide if you remove the tablet and place it back on the resting base and negates the need to realign the tablet. (As an option, you can colour in the whole of the resting base top with a black marker pen. This is for aesthetics only as the tablet will be covered with a lid anyway).
3. Now to make the foot rest. This will help if you use the stand on a low surface area like a coffee table, and using the stand will raise the front of the stand up for a better viewing angle. Simply grab your two long 'L' brackets, measure and cut a length of 'L' shaped profile the same width of the stand, glue the brackets to the profile length, then drill and screw in the brackets into the bottom sides of the stand. Make the screws pinch tight so the foot rest can move, but also holds itself in place.
4. Racing to the end, we will now make the removable lid. This is an optional extra, but makes the whole stand look a little bit better. Measure, mark and cut out a sheet of Foamcore just a bit bigger so it overlaps the top picture frame. The overlap should be the same size as the thickness of the Foamcore all around so the lid fits over the top picture frame.
5. Measure, mark and cut out two side strips and two end strips of Foamcore making them about the same depth of slightly wider than the picture frame, then one at a time lay some hot glue along the edges of the strips and attach then to the Foamcore sheet.
6. Now make a mark on the lid where the tablets mic is located, draw a circle for the speaker so the top just fits in, then cut it out. Use a strip of Foamcore about the width of the lid and about 15mm wider on each side than the speaker diameter. draw another tight fitting circle and cut that out.
7. At this point, I wrapped my lid and strip with black wood effect vinyl wrap, but you could simply use black Foamcore. I used white as I already had some in my supply's cupboard. Place the strip on top of the lid so the holes match, place the speaker in, lift the strip with the speaker out again, hot glue the bottom of the strip and place them back on to the lid using the speaker to make sure they are aligned and the strip is straight to the lid edge. Test that the speaker can be lifted out and placed back in firmly in place.
8. And the final job, and a simple but important one... clean that glass. Wipe away all of the fingerprint smudges and dust caused by handling it while working.

And the stand is now complete and ready to use. All that needs to be done now is set up the tablet for Vincent to rock, roll, bounce... and chat (or rather appear to chat).

Top tips:

For the foot rest, screwing a length of wood like stick timber, MDF or plywood etc. to the brackets will work just as well as the 'L' profile strip I used. I simply used it as I already had some to use, and it was already black.

THIS IS A BIG ONE: The location of my tablets mic is on one side of the tablet next to its power port. This decides the Bluetooth speak placement. But knowing that all tablets are not made equal and mic locations may differ on different brands and models, you can still make your own display stand following my instructions, but just do a little bit of re-planning if your tablet's mic is in a different location, such as along the top by the camera. Of course this won't matter if you're only going to display Vincent as a video wallpaper, as you won't be using the mic or a Bluetooth speaker for the A.I assistant talking avatar feature.

1. If you are using a new/second hand Windows tablet, make sure it's fully set up with all of the necessary Windows updates installed. A tip for getting rid of white information bars on your tablet is to turn 'Dark Mode' on. Then install Veadotube Mini with the compatible version for your tablet, and the video wallpaper or video media player app/program of your choice.
2. Transfer the idle and talk GIFs and the video wallpaper over to the tablet either by flash drive, portable drive of by 'Share' transfer.
3. To set up Veadotube, click on the top square /face icon for 'Mouth closed', then 'Replace image' and select your Vincent idle GIF. When it loads, click on the next square down for 'Mouth open' > 'Replace image' and choose the Vincent talk GIF. On the following two squares, click and choose 'Remove image'. Now click on the keyhole shaped icon under the pencil icon, then click the 'X' to delete the 'Wobble' motion. Now set the 'Microphone delay duration' slider to the very top, and the 'microphone volume cutoff' near to the top (test and adjust later if needed). By tapping your tablet you should see the GIFs movement both matched up and change to the talk GIF displayed.
4. Pair the Bluetooth speaker to your chosen device that you will use your A.I assistants on.
5. To give Vincent his own personality, open ChatGPT and sign into your account or sign up to one, click on your profile icon picture (top right corner), select 'Customize GPT' and write in what personality traits you would like. Click save when you're done. The changes may take a few minutes to take effect. You can find the personality prompt I use at the end of this step.
6. Now you can open Veadotube, turn the tablet to portrait mode and place the tablet onto the stand, mic near the speaker location and with Vincent's head next to the top part of the glass (handling the tablet and placing it onto the stand without it changing its orientation can take a little practice). Now you can place the stand's lid on top and put the speaker in place and turn it on and connect to your assistant device..
7. Now you can use the 'Voice mode' on ChatGPT and start having a conversation with your new robot buddy. Adjust the volume levels on your assistant device and adjust the Veadotube volume cutoff slider so Vincent's 'Talk Mode' Gif doesn't show when you talk, but only when Vincent talks (not an issue with the speaker and mic being so close). Then you can now play your wallpaper too because we are finished.

As Vincent had a male voice in the movie, I wanted to keep that so I chose male voices for ChatGPT and Alexa as obviously I didn't have access to Roddy McDowell's voice as much, as I would have loved to. But it's totally optional what voice you choose, it could even be a female one too. I chose the 'Cove' voice in GPT and an American voice for Alexa (I can't remember it's name, I chose it from a samples being played). They both sounded similar to each other and I liked the American accent which matched Vincent's original voice.

Top tips:

To hide the grid lines and option tabs on Veadotube, on a PC or laptop, move the pointer off the screen. On a tablet, tap the very top of the screen or a blank space on the taskbar. Tap anywhere else on the screen to show it again.

In stage 6 above I mentioned about handling and placing the tablet onto the stand with Veadotube running so the orientation doesn't change. It should be in portrait mode then lay it down, but with the video wallpaper it's different. If you remember I mentioned in step 5 stage 5 that the video wallpaper clips had to be rotated 90 degrees during editing and saved. Now if you were to have the tablet in portrait mode, Vincent would shrink in size. So now place the tablet in landscape mode, play the video wallpaper which will show Vincent on his side, then lay the tablet down onto the stand in landscape mode so the screen doesn't reorientate.

The chat assistant's response times in the video are in real time. The ChatGPT response times were excellent, very quick and natural. The Alexa ones were also quick and the delay in me asking questions was due to me holding a tablet and pressing a mic button in one hand while filming with my phone in the other... a fun experience lol.

If you want to run your video wallpaper on a video media player, I recommend using VLC player as this is free, works well, and has the all important video loop play feature. When the video starts to play or the loop starts over, you may see the video title displayed for a few seconds. To get rid of this, click 'Tools' > 'Preferences' > 'Subtitles/OSD' > then untick 'Enable on screen display (OSD)' and 'Show media title on video start', then click 'Save' (see last picture above). You may have to restart VLC player for these changes to take effect.

And here's Vincent's personality prompt I use...

Your name is Vincent. You talk and behave like the robot called Vincent in the 1979 movie called the black hole. You are witty, intelligent and loyal. You don't like sore losers and you consider yourself the best. You like to lecture and tease people using philosophical phrases. Your name means vital information necessary centralised. You served as a utility robot aboard the ship palomino as one of the crew.

Thinking about how Vincent hovers around on the display glass, you could always use other characters if Vincent isn’t you thing. Maybe the Instructables mascot robot or ‘Slimmer’ from Ghostbusters as he's a ghost that's naturally transparent (the second picture above is what I'm currently working on for Halloween). Or if you want to up your drawing and animation game, use Marvels ‘Vision’ floating in mid air with his cape flowing which would work well with an A.I assistant given his J.A.R.V.I.S origins, and then use voice software like ElevenLabs and use the Jarvis voice like I did for my smart table's A.I assistant. Really any other character you can think of can be used to make this project your own and give your phone/ tablet, computer, smart speaker’s virtual assistant that extra bit of wow factor.

I did play with the idea of stripping apart a flat screen TV, removing the LED back light panel, removing the anti-glare film and making a stand so it sits in portrait mode, then with a bit of a different setup to this project, having a large see through holographic style display for having a much larger Vincent bobbing around the screen. But I don’t currently have the space for that right now (at time of writing), but this may well be a project I’ll undertake soon, so keep an eye out on Instructables. Watch this space.

I would also like to one day ditch the idea of using the tablet mic, the Bluetooth speaker and my phone and do everything just on the tablet where I speak to the onboard assistant and use the PC's soundcard (either Windows or Android) to trigger talk animations. But as of yet I have not found a viable way to do this switching between idle and talking GIFs and don't have the knowledge to program one myself. But if you know of a solution, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Time to wrap up, so I hope that you enjoyed this Instructable and that you found it helpful. This was a real blast for me and enjoyed the whole process very much. If you decide to make your own, either with Vincent or another character of your choice, please click the ‘I made it’ button below as I would love to see what you made.

Thanks for reading, and happy making.

Design, Make, Document, Share,

It’s the Instructables Way!