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Back from the dead: The animatronic comeback

Published Friday 3 July 2009 at 16:25 by Sonny Tilders

Animatronics may have been overtaken by CGI in films, but it’s making a comeback in live shows, explains Sonny Tilders, dinosaur creator and director of Global Creatures

Animatronics - the use of electronics and robotics in mechanised puppets to make them appear alive - enjoyed a heyday in mainstream cinema in the late eighties and early nineties. Out in Australia, I grew up on movies such as The Dark Crystal and ET, where the stars of the story were animatronic creatures. Forerunners like Jaws showed how good storytelling could combine with animatronics to create a powerful fear factor and a believable animated creature.

In Australia, a major outpost of the animatronics industry developed after Kennedy Miller Productions filmed Babe there. The design of complex control systems and realistic skins reached new levels. There was a healthy sub-industry devoted to creating believable moving creatures on film.

But the late nineties brought a sea change in the way animated creatures were put on film. Computer generated imagery (CGI) became a viable alternative to animatronics and offered film directors and producers a key advantage - predictability.

In the shooting schedule, when something goes wrong, 80 people can be kept waiting for it to be fixed. Expensive shooting days can dwindle when complex stunts or machinery hold up filming. Animatronics professionals have plenty of sad tales of wasted endeavour. For the 2003 version of Peter Pan, I worked on creating a giant crocodile. For six months, technician Trevor Tighe and I refined the lifelike movement of our crocodile with fluid hydraulics and voodoo rigs (remote control systems). The only thing that featured in the end was the eye opening.

Watching the rise of CGI and the resulting decline of the animatronics industry, the aspect I miss most is the quality of real interaction. It is understandably difficult for actors to react to things that are not there, and when live action and CGI meet, it can be harder for the audience to believe in the relationship. If the actor’s eye line is not properly focused, it is hard to tell if they’re reacting to something five or ten feet away. Perhaps this is now being taught at acting schools.

The sad irony was that CGI put animatronics into early retirement just when animatronics had developed its most sophisticated control mechanisms. All the really challenging tasks went to CGI and an art form that had reached a new maturity quickly became something of a dinosaur.

Then something unusual happened. Producers in Australia approached me to help them adapt a TV series that had used state of the art CGI and turn it into a live spectacle using animatronics. The subject? Dinosaurs.

When I was presented with the challenge to create 16 moving dinosaurs for an arena show based on the BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs, I realised that the chance had come to do what had been missing in film for years. In the live arena, there could be no CGI alternative to animatronics. A real-time performance with an audience on three sides would mean we could not use much illusion. The work that Trevor, myself and scores of talented craftsmen had put into making animate creatures for movies was going to be exposed. That extraordinary talent base, with superb skills in engineering and design, would now be working for the stage.

In January 2006, we formed the Creature Technology Company, and set about inventing, developing and deploying the latest in animatronics design in order to create Walking With Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular. Spurred on by the unwavering faith of our investor Gerry Ryan, while other animatronics companies were closing down or diversifying, we were creating a new one, complete with a sister company to tour the show. An entire entertainment group emerged - Global Creatures, devoted to live animatronics.

More than 2.5 million people have now seen our show in Australia and the US. They love the way the technology is on display and they like letting themselves be ‘deceived’ in the physical realm. Meanwhile, we love interacting with audiences. The immediacy you hear actors talking about when they move from film to the stage is very real for us too.

As we tour the UK and Europe for the first time, we are facing our next challenge at our Melbourne workshop - King Kong, a bipedal creature, will have to beat his chest, knock down sets, climb objects and pick up a woman without causing injury. Our control systems will need to be much more sophisticated, but we will also need to keep sight of the fact that these are a means rather than an end - we have to create a piece of theatre with heart.

Global Creatures has just agreed a deal with Dreamworks to create an arena show based on a forthcoming movie, How to Train Your Dragon. Perhaps there is a new relationship between film and stage blossoming, with animatronics starring in the story once again.

• Walking With Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular tours the UK until the end of August and visits Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, London, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool

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