Sunday, June 22, 2014
How Disney built and programmed an animatronic president
Ars Technica: Animatronics have powered some of sci-fi and fantasy cinema's most imposing creatures and characters: The alien queen in Aliens, the Terminator in The Terminator, and Jaws of Jaws (the key to getting top billing in Hollywood: be a robot). Even beloved little E.T.—of E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial—was a pile of aluminum, steel, and foam rubber capable of 150 robotic actions, including wrinkling its nose. But although animatronics is a treasured component of some of culture's farthest-reaching movies, it originated in much more mundane circumstances. According to the Disney archives, it began with a bird.
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Disney is one of the first companies to take on the work of what we do today, entertaining people through live performances. Disney also pioneered another major field today. One the will continue to get bigger and bigger in the future, robotics. Disney’s animatronics were amazing machines in their day and are still pieces that we look up to. They pioneered so many amazing technologies that we have today. Another big thing that they started is the idea of cuing out a piece of entertainment, a part of our job that is so obvious to us today. The animatronics were built with tapes that contained the cues for the various movements of the joints and machines. Without these concepts, who knows where our industry would be today. These animatronics that Disney created in the 1960’s are still used today in various film and live entertainment applications. They continue to become more and more advanced and to amaze me in every motion that they can make.
As a kid, I loved the weird and fantastical nature of the birds in the Tiki Room at Disneyland. I was particularly fascinated by the oddly realistic ways in which the birds moved and sung while still being obviously fake. Even though I could tell the birds weren't real, I allowed myself to believe they were live, singing, animals. I was equally interested by the Country Bear Jamboree (which was only at Disneyland for a short time when I was a kid) because the large bears moved in such an obviously robotic way but still somehow seemed believable. I love how this article picks apart the intricacies of making animatronics because it shows the huge level of complexity behind each robotic creature. What strikes me is how nowadays animatronics are at a point where you cannot always judge if they're real or not! Like I said, as a kid I could easily see how animatronics were not real animals or creatures, but I wonder how future generations will interpret these hyper-realistic animatronics?
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