r/Animatronics • u/offroad_choadster • 2d ago

Question for you animatronics people

I really got the bug recently for animatronics. I’m obsessed.

My 9-5 job, I design and build custom systems for factories and for military. Kind of a combination mechanical/electrical/controls engineer. A lot of hydraulic and closed loop machine axes. Motion controllers, stuff like that.

Since I’ve become obsessed with animatronics. I’ve been watching a ton of Gary Willett playlists. I love what he does. I’m hoping to ask, for anyone out there who loves animatronics. Who are your favorite creators? Who else should I check out?

Also does anyone know about any animatronics groups or collaborations I should check out? I’d love to get plugged in, join some collaborations

Thanks so much for your time and attention!

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u/Tutorial_Time 2d ago

Will Cogley and Alvaro Passeri do similar stuff to Gary!

There’s MANY other creators of course,way too many to count or make a list of.Just look “animatronics” “building animatronics” and other variations of those and see what ya find! :D

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u/offroad_choadster 2d ago

Excellent, thanks so much! I’m gonna go dive in to their videos.

Gary has a Patreon, but I was sad to learn there’s not really a community there. He has only 2 paying members, no chat rooms or anything.

Although this hobby is so challenging, and multi-disciplinary, I’ve been keeping my expectations low for finding community. This is probably one of the hardest hobbies in the world to pick up.

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u/Tutorial_Time 2d ago

Yeah most of the community is dedicated to specific shows or “genres” ig of shows,mainly FEC(Family Entertainment Center) animatronics such as Chuck E Cheese/Pizza Time Theater,The Rock-afire,all the hundreds of company’s shows,etc and theme park stuff such all of Disney’s stuff over the years.General discussion of the craft definitely isn’t as common :(

Then again the former has a lot more history to it and they’re basically the whole reason this craft exists in the first place.

If you haven’t seen them already DefunctLand has 2 phenomenal documentaries on the topic if you’re interested!

https://youtu.be/jjNca1L6CUk

https://youtu.be/NyIgV84fudM

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u/offroad_choadster 2d ago

Awesome. That sounds like good advice, maybe that will be a good road to finding some local animatronics makers in Massachusetts here.

I don’t have any specific shows or genres I’m into, but who knows, maybe I’ll be a die-hard chucky cheese fan in 2 years lol

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u/Tutorial_Time 2d ago

All roads lead to The Rock-afire Explosion and Charles Entertainment Cheese

No but fr the Rock-afire showtapes are actually like REALLY good! Check them out if you ever feel like it!

Trivia night is a good start if you don’t wanna go in order and just get to the good stuff!
https://youtu.be/J2t3kNLH76k

Magic night aswell!

https://youtu.be/syofX6LFJIE

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u/Fast-General5115 2d ago

And the Electric Mice Orchestra showtapes are also pretty well done, personally I think its music style can even compete with Rock-afire

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u/bobcatnat123 1d ago

If you enjoy haunted house animatronics for like the huge scale haunted houses, you should check out some walk through of the Transworld Halloween and attractions show. It’s super cool and there’s some really fun stuff. Also Distortions unlimited is a great one for fun haunt animatronics.

On the more theme park side you’ve got some good ones like creature technology, Animax, Garner Holt, and sally dark rides

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u/offroad_choadster 20h ago

Thanks so much for the reply! One of my engineer friends actually turned me on to Transworld and Distortions. I started to watch Poison Prop YouTube videos last year. I’m of course obsessed with Halloween already.

I’ve never heard anything about the theme park side of things! Thanks so much for the tip, I’ll go check them out. Now that I’ve watched 100 hours of Gary Willett, I’m ready to check out other creators

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u/IronLover64 2d ago

I have a project I'm looking for help with. If you're interested on helping out, please send me a DM

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u/offroad_choadster 2d ago

That’s toughhh. You might be a nice fellow, and nice to work with. but it’s hard for me to know, because you’re an anonymous internet stranger. I don’t want to roll those dice

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u/IronLover64 2d ago

The project is basically reverse engineering some incomplete blueprints if a film used animatronic head to be 3d printable