Boing Boing: "Ricky sez, 'The relatively new Cinderella Castle stage show at the Magic Kingdom has received a technology upgrade that really enhances the magic. Costumed characters like Mickey Mouse are now able to move their mouths in sync with their spoken words and blink their eyes for added realism.'"
5 comments:
I imagine it adds alot of reality to the show and makes it much more believable than just some bobble heads singing without moving their mouths.
For some really cool animatronics, check out:
http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/strArticleID/57622/strSite/MDSite/viewSelectedArticle.asp
they wrote an article about the Team America puppet animatronics. It is more impressive because they have so many different emotions/axis (ie servos and actuators) in such a small area: crammed into the head of a 22" puppet...
The steps that animatronics have taken in the last couple years, as seen with the new Johnny Depp figures in Disney's Pirates of the Carribean, are phenomenal. Disney has really always been at the top of the game with this. For example, they've been working on freestanding, remote, animatronics like Lucky.
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/
tom-keating/personal-and-humor/
lucky-the-dinosaur-animal-kingdom.asp
It's nice to see something besides the large heads that do nothing on the bodies. I wonder if they will continue on in this path and go towards the actual characters that families see in the parks. If kids weren't scared before, they will be now.
This is something really cool to look at in terms of seeing progress and interesting ways we might not have seen or expected these costumed characters to be heading towards in terms of using electronics to animate costumes. At least its not something I would have thought of originally but I guess leave it to disney to do something like this...
I'd love to see this. I can't wait to watch the progress this type of thing takes. I wonder how this is going to be integrated further in the theatre world. Veeerrrryyy interesting. maybe a little scary for performers, but I can't help thinking that that's pretty cool......
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