I became infatuated with animatronics in 2022,
A friend was playing "Rock-afire Explosion" videos in the background while we were painting. I thought to myself, "Why do those look familiar?" despite the very fact that I was not alive during the era of "Showbiz Pizza Place".
Well, ever since that day, I decided to dive into animatronics. After studying how everything works visually, I made a scaled-model to understand the physics at play, and then once I understood everything, I began to build my first full-sized character in December 2022.
The mechanism itself took me 6 months to build, and I am still making improvements to my initial design, to this day.
To say I am "pleased" with how my first character turned out, would be a complete understatement. It is important to note that I had ZERO robotics, electronics, and mechanical design knowledge prior to diving head-first into this project.
I did, however; have the ambition, the thirst to learn, the problem-solving mentality, and the creative outlook needed to complete a project of this scale.
Body Mechanism Design
Arm Mechanism
Head Mechanism
My ambitious project does not stop with just one character.
I plan to build an entire band of characters, complete with a stage set-up and coinciding artwork to introduce the new group of characters into the world of animatronics. I want to build an engaging and unique show, just like how some of the greatest animatronic engineers of the past have done.
I learned more through my interest an animatronics than ever before. I taught myself everything there is to know, and there is A LOT that I did not know going in. Just to name a few:
I learned how to cut metal, drill metal, fasten pieces together with nuts and bolts, 3D model parts to be 3D printed, hose a pneumatic figure, wire solenoid valves, build a solenoid valve bank, design mechanisms to work with linear actuators, and much more
Early Head Mechanism
