An animatronic is a puppet controlled electronically to move in a fluent way.
Animatronics are a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy and mechatronics.
Before the term "animatronics" became common, they were usually referred to as "robots".
History
Before electronics, animatronics were simply puppets made to work with clockwork. These are known today as
Automaton. For most of human history, it has not been possible to create a moving figure resembling a person that was not directly puppeted by another person.
In the renaissance era, the first clockwork automated humanoid figures were created.
The first audio animatronic to convincingly imitate a human was Walt Disney's Abraham Lincoln attraction at the Illinois State Pavilion of the 1964 New York World's Fair. This marked a change in the industry, as computers were a pivotal part in creating the figure.
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1964: In the film Mary Poppins, animatronic birds are the first animatronics featured in a motion picture. The first animatronic figure of a person, that of Abraham Lincoln, is created by Disney for its Abraham Lincoln attraction at the Illinois State Pavilion of the 1964 New York World's Fair.
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1971: Walt Disney World opens with the Country Bear Jamboree and Mickey Mouse Revue attractions, containing 24 and 81 Audio-Animatronics, respectively. The park also opens with The Hall of Presidents, which started with 37 animatronics and adds a new animatronic for each new president.
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1977: Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre opens under Warner Communications as the first restaurant with animatronics as an attraction in San Jose, California, created by Nolan Bushnell and designed by Harold Goldbrandsen.
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1977: John Wardley debuts "Charlie Plucket" Animatronic on BBC's Tomorrow's World.
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1978: AVG Technologies is founded by Alvaro Villa, former head of electronic animation research and development for the Walt Disney Company.
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1980: ShowBiz Pizza Place debuts The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic band manufactured by Aaron Fechter Creative Engineering Inc. (CEI) to directly compete with Chuck E. Cheese.
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1981: Efteling renovates its Fairytale Forest walk through ride, adding 92 animatronics.
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1982: Ben Franklin is the first animatronic figure to walk up a set of stairs.
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1982: Daniel and the Dixie Diggers, the first animatronic band from Sally Industries of Jacksonville, Florida, debuts at the Mark Twain's Riverboat Playhouse in Kendall, Florida.
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1982: David L. Brown establishes the first Bullwinkle's Family Food N' Fun Restaurant in Santa Clara, California, with prototype animatronics provided by Fred Hope's The Only Animated Display & Design Company.
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1982: The first Celebration Station opens with a W.O.O.F. Radio animatronic show by Creative Presentations, Inc. of Schaumburg, Illinois. Celebration Station later opened locations with Sally Corporation's Daniel and the Dixie Diggers with Jethro P. Hogg starting in 1991, along with a retrofit of the latter known as The Rockin' Rascals for Knoxville, Tennessee by 1993.
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1982: Warner Communications, five years after losing ownership of Pizza Time Theatre, creates the Gadgets chain of restaurants (initially named "Gizmos"). These featured Sammy Sands, an animatronic pianist, and the Looney Tunes Revue, both manufactured by Advanced Animations of Southbury, Connecticut.
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1986: Warner Communications sells Advanced Animations back to Bob Marquis and Dan Long, relocating to Stockbridge, Vermont.
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1987: Stew Leonard's in Norwalk, Connecticut implements the Farm Fresh Five animatronic band, initially manufactured by Advanced Animations. More animatronics were added to Norwalk and locations afterward, such as the Hank and Beau characters by Sally Industries.
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1989: The second generation of Disney's generic animatronics, the "A-100", portraying the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz is developed for The Great Movie Ride attraction at Disney-MGM Studios.
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1990: ShowBiz Pizza begins to convert the Rock-afire Explosion into "Chuck E. Cheese & Munch's Make Believe Band" and cuts ties with CEI.
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1997: Garner Holt Productions begins supplying a 32 movement Chuck E. Cheese animatronic for Chuck E. Cheese's "Studio C" stages. To cut manufacturing and maintenance costs, this number was reduced to 16 movements starting in 2002.
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1998: Tiger Electronics begins selling Furby, an animatronic pet that speaks over 800 English and "Furbish" phrases and can react to its environment.
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1999: AVG manufactures approximately 140 animatronics for Universal Islands of Adventure. These were for the Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls, The Cat in the Hat, and Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges attractions.
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2001: The largest animatronic figure ever built was the Spinosaurus for Steven Spielberg's franchise Jurassic Park.
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2005: Engineered Arts produces the first version of their animatronic actor, RoboThespian.
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October 31, 2008 – July 1, 2009: The Abraham Lincoln animatronic character is upgraded to incorporate new technology at The Hall of Presidents.
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2019: Disney releases a number of new characters based on their third-generation platform "A-1000".
Design
There are quite a few ways to build an animatronic, however most follow this basic structure:
An animatronics character is typically designed to be as realistic as possible and thus, is built similarly to how it would be in real life. The framework of the figure is like the "skeleton". Joints, motors, and act as the "muscles". Connecting all the electrical components together are wires, such as the "nervous system" of a real animal or person.
One method of constructing animatronics can be found in the Chuck E. Cheese's Studio C animatronic by Garner Holt Productions, made of latex rubber, metal, and plastic, supported by an internal skeleton.
Materials
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Latex: White latex is commonly used as a general material because it has a high level of elasticity. It is also pre-vulcanized, making it easy and fast to apply.
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Silicone: Disney has a research team devoted to improving and developing better methods of creating more lifelike animatronics exteriors with silicone.
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Polyurethane: Polyurethane rubber is a more cost effective material to use in place of silicone. Polyurethane comes in various levels of hardness which are measured on the Shore scale. Rigid polyurethane foam is used in prototyping because it can be milled and shaped in high density. Flexible polyurethane foam is often used in the actual building of the final animatronic figure because it is flexible and bonds well with latex.
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Plaster: As a commonplace construction and home decorating material, plaster is widely available. Its rigidity limits its use in molds, and plaster molds are unsuitable when undercuts are present. This may make plaster far more difficult to use than softer materials like latex or silicone.
Movement
Pneumatic actuators can be used for small animatronics but are not powerful enough for large designs and must be supplemented with
. To create more realistic movement in large figures, an analog system is generally used to give the figures a full range of fluid motion rather than simple two position movements.
Mimicking the often-subtle displays of humans and other living creatures, and the associated movement is a challenging task when developing animatronics. One of the most common emotional models is the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) developed by Ekman and Friesen.
In 2020 Disney revealed its new animatronics robot that can breathe, move its eyes very much like humans, and identify people around it in order to select "an appropriate" response, as opposed to previous Disney animatronics that were used in purely scripted, non-interactive situations, like theme park rides.
Training and education
Animatronics has been developed as a career which combines the disciplines of mechanical engineering,
casting/
sculpting, control technologies, electrical/electronic systems,
radio control and
airbrushing.
Some colleges and universities do offer degree programs in animatronics. Individuals interested in animatronics typically earn a degree in robotics which closely relate to the specializations needed in animatronics engineering.
Students achieving a bachelor's degree in robotics commonly complete courses in:
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Mechanical engineering
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Industrial robotics
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Mechatronics systems
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Modeling of robotics systems
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Robotics engineering
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Foundational theory of robotics
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Introduction to robotics
In popular culture
Animatronic characters appear in both
and
, most notably in
horror film and
Survival horror that generally features possessed animatronics as antagonists.
In films
The film industry has been a driving force revolutionizing the technology used to develop animatronics.
Animatronics are used in situations where a creature does not exist, the action is too risky or costly to use real actors or animals, or the action could never be obtained with a living person or animal. Its main advantage over CGI and
stop-motion is that the simulated creature has a physical presence moving in front of the camera in real time. The technology behind animatronics has become more advanced and sophisticated over the years, making the
even more lifelike.
Animatronics were first introduced by Disney in the 1964 film Mary Poppins which featured an animatronic bird. Since then, animatronics have been used extensively in such movies as Jaws and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
The 1993 film Jurassic Park, directed by Spielberg, used a combination of computer-generated imagery in conjunction with life-sized animatronic dinosaurs built by Stan Winston and his team. Winston's animatronic "T. rex" stood almost ,
in length
Jack Horner called it "the closest I've ever been to a live dinosaur".
The 1999 BBC miniseries Walking with Dinosaurs was produced using a combination of about 80% CGI and 20% animatronic models.
Geoff Peterson is an animatronic human skeleton that serves as the sidekick on the late-night talk show The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Often referred to as a "robot skeleton", Peterson is a radio-controlled animatronic robot puppet designed and built by Grant Imahara of MythBusters.
Films focusing on animatronics
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The Banana Splits Movie, a 2019 American comedy horror film starring Dani Kind, Steve Lund, Sara Canning, and the voice of Eric Bauza, follows a young boy and his family who, as a birthday present, attend a Live television of a successful children's television series featuring Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper, and Snorky, four goofy-like animatronic characters. However, their new software updates go haywire upon learning the upcoming cancellation of their show and the characters start a killing spree that the crew and audience must survive. It is a horror reimagining of the 1968-1970 Hanna-Barbera's television series of the same name.
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Willy's Wonderland, a 2021 American Action film comedy horror film starring Nicolas Cage, Emily Tosta, David Sheftell and Beth Grant, follows a quiet drifter who is tricked into cleaning up a once-successful abandoned family entertainment center while battling the restaurant's eight murderous animatronic characters (possessed by souls of cannibalistic ) with the aid of a teenager and her friends.
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Five Nights at Freddy's, a 2023 American supernatural horror film starring Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Matthew Lillard, follows a troubled young man caring for his 10-year-old sister who is suggested by his career counselor to take up a night shift job at a once-successful abandoned family entertainment center, while keeping an eye on the restaurant's four murderous animatronic characters Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy (possessed by the Ghost of five missing dead children) while trying to figure out unsolved Kidnapping of his younger brother more than a decade before. It is based on the Five Nights at Freddy's video game series created by Scott Cawthon.
Short films
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The Hug, a 2018 horror short film directed by Jack Bishop and Justin Nijm, and starring Nick Armstrong and Roman George, follows a bratty birthday boy at Pandory's Pan Pizza Palace, a ShowBiz Pizza Place-like restaurant, who has an awkward situation with Pandory the Panda, the pizzeria's giant panda animatronic mascot. It premiered at Hulu as part of its "Huluween" film competition.
Television
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Regular Show features recurring antagonist The Capicola Gang, a trio of evil Anthropomorphism animatronic animals from The Fun Fun Zone. They are the main antagonists in the episodes "Fuzzy Dice" and "Steak Me Amadeus" and one of the members makes a cameo appearance as in "Can you Ear Me Now?" They are a parody of the popular kids entertainment center Chuck E. Cheese.
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Hoo-Ha's Jamboree, an animatronic band at Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizzamatronic Jamboree, and a parody of The Rock-afire Explosion of ShowBiz Pizza Place, which consist of Hoo-Ha the Owl (guitarist, and lead singer), Cheerleader (banjoist), Beaver (guitarist), Rat in a Barrel (two same animatronics sit on either side of the stage), Cowboy Frog (bongo drum player), and Will E. Badger (opening act) are the secondary antagonists in the Gravity Falls episodes "Soos and the Real Girl", "Weirdmageddon Part 1", and "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality".
Advertising
The British advertisement campaign for Cadbury Schweppes titled
Gorilla featured an actor inside a gorilla suit with an animatronically animated face.
The Slowskys was an advertising campaign for Comcast Cable's Xfinity broadband Internet service. The ad features two animatronic turtles, and it won the gold Effie Award in 2007.
Video games
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Five Nights at Freddy's (commonly known as FNAF), a horror video game series, features various animatronic entertainers as antagonists who try to kill the player character. In the first game of the series, the animatronics' violent attitude towards humans explained as faulty programming. However, as the series continues, their behavior is linked to the murders of children by William Afton, one of the founders of the in-game restaurant and the series' overarching villain. Afton would go on to possess an animatronic of his own after his death.
Toys
Some examples of animatronic toys include
TJ Bearytails, Big Mouth Billy Bass,
FurReal, Kota the triceratops,
Pleo, WowWee Alive Chimpanzee,
ActiMates, and
Furby. Well-known brands include Cuddle Barn, PBC International, Telco, Sound N Light, Iwaya Corporation, Nika International,
Gemmy Industries, Tickle Me Elmo, Chantilly Lane and Dan Dee.
See also
External links
