Lifelike Anumatronic Abrham Lincoln
Hey everybody, it's Norm from Tested. I'm here outside the studio of Garnet Holt Productions. Now, that may not be a name familiar to you
but you may have recognized their work specifically their animatronics work
which appears in theme parks all over the world including some Disney parks. Now, a couple months ago
they released a video of some of their latest animatronics including an incredibly realistic Abraham Lincoln animatronic.
So I'm here today to meet with Mr. Garner Holt
himself and look at that Abraham Lincoln animatronic to see how it works. I can't wait.
Witchcraft is something bad. We can't explain.
Magic is something good that we can't figure out how it works.
Garner Holt Productions is in the business of making good magic.
Garner, thank you so much for having me here. This is incredible. This is
Abraham Lincoln. It is the one only. So this is, it sounds like, one of your latest animatronics. How long have you guys been making animatronics?
Well thank you, we're glad to be here
We have been building animatronics now for 40 years we actually
celebrated our 40th anniversary July 25th of this year and
We're the largest company in the world that provides animatronics to theme parks and museums and stores and things of that nature worldwide
Yeah
audio animatronics kind of the history that starts I believe with early Disney theme park and those rides people who are familiar with that
Yeah, and you guys were following along working alongside that progression
Yeah
Disney kind of wrote the book on modern-day animatronics back in the 60s with Lincoln in the World's Fair
And that's kind of why we did Lincoln
That's he's been kind of a important figure as far as you know it's inspirational to me as a child seeing Lincoln at Disneyland, so
You know we've kind of followed along in the development of animatronics
And we kind of gone out on our own and to really make something special that's never been done before
This is the most complex human head that said than built in history
We try to blur the line between
real and and
mechanical
It's what we call the illusion of life
that's what we work to create here, and I think he's a good example of our latest attempts at a
Simulated human expressive face. I'd say corner hole productions is on to something here
People they make whom to say what you want to do
To blur that line so create that illusion it seems to me there are two things going on one is the the make of?
Design the fabrication of that's just the skin and the face and then second is the mechanics inside
I imagine both of those have changed drastically over your four years working. Can you walk me through some of the improvements?
What did they?
look like when Walt Disney made an Abraham Lincoln or two years ago versus what you guys can make now well the sculpture that they
Had wasn't bad
Mechanically it wasn't anywhere as close to this you know. This is this is really difficult to do
That's why you don't see them out there in the world. You know mechanically. It's difficult
Combining it with the face making the the skin move like a real human face
It's really hard and trying to make it look just like a real person
All the colors the skins the the way the skin is formulated we have special proprietary skins
He's got over 40 different actuators close to 45 actuators in his head and his face alone
He's got seven neck vertebra that move
So he's as close to a real
human
Mechanical person as you've ever seen in the world nobody's ever been taken really this far
And as you and your team are looking at technologies are available now
You know new actuators new types of mechanical movements are being designed all the time
Are you looking at how much can you fit your constraints over the size of a human head yeah, right?
And then you want to pack more in there and devising new ways that they actually
interlock and interface with the skin
Yeah, well you know it's it's it's difficult because in animatronics. We have what we call the envelope
You know if you're doing an animated sparrow or something
I mean you can only put it what fits inside the sparrow you know so you know here you have a human head
You know the size of a small watermelon or a cantaloupe, you know you have to put 40 actuators in there
and they all have to do things that make it look real and
Respond realistically he can look you know happy or sad or frustrated or angry
He can talk and and you know announce he eight syllables he can move his lips to actually form words
And to make all that work mechanically is is really tough
And I have a lot of wonderful people here that are very talented making this stuff work
And when you talk about something like a sparrow yes the size, or you know something
That's not humid is gonna be a different shape but also the requirements
what the viewer expects of the performance is going to be different in terms of the performance of a human someone, that's
recognizable in history so if I got a list of all the facial expressions that you want like a dream list of
We do we create lists of expressions
we're looking for and then we have you know with the 42 different movements that we have and like I
Say in that range because it does vary, but we have the ability to create. You know literally millions of different expressions because you know
42 can infinitely create, you know any number of expressions
You know everybody knows what a face looks like you know everybody you see that every day
and you know we have to follow a lot of the same rules we had to make the eyes as realistic as possible because when
You walk up to an animated figure just like a human you instinctively go right for the eyes
and so it was very important for us to make highly realistic eyes and
You know getting into the mouth about seeing words, and you know all the different colors and the punched hair
This is all real human hair on him
actually and
It's uh?
It's a it's a whole lot of people involved
you know everywhere from sculpting all the way on through to you know the eye making and mechanics and the
Computers and the electronics to run it
It's just as crazy complex and also has an attraction piece with so many movements
You're also allowing the order to be closer
And you know if they keep the distance and you're sure and I mean we're right up to its face
And I'm looking at its eyes, and yes, I I know it's it's a Mac
But it's some of these movements are incredibly realistic well
Thank you. We appreciate that he can he can do so many things and we have
You know the each each funk has its own computer so there there are close to along with the program computers
They're close to 50 computers running all at the same time to make this happen and they all fit inside of his podium
you know so the miniaturization of electronics and the
advances in plastics and the advances
Advances in servo motors that you know aircraft quality servo motors
Because you know we have to make this stuff last for years and years in a theme-park application. You know
but if you get him in the right speech and right environment he gets teary-eyed and
We hope to evoke that same those same emotions from the audience
You know we like to if he laughs we want people to laugh if he cries want people to cry you know so
That's what we're trying to do kind of
By creating the illusion of life of our animatronics. Do you also work the other way around feedback from the audience?
I know you have an operator right now running it
But do you imagine the future animatronics respond to how the audience their expressions their their
voice
sure
Well the person that's running it now is just just telling it like to be happy or sad or the reason
I this is all a
Program that's running that the figures creating, but we have what we're developing is an AI type
Situation you know you get like a Siri type thing attached to it
We do have we do have characters that have and we have developed where they can lock on to you. Eye to eye
And they have the ability to so they'll track you they have the ability to identify you through facial recognition
So we're working on things where they'll actually be able to be interactive with you
But so we're controlling it by saying you know run a particular program, but he's not a puppet
He's an actual figure
That's functioning under you know
Controls that are basically embedded in him and because this is a bus you're focusing on the head
I mean you do animatronics of all different shapes and sizes is your dream one day a type of full-body and
We're doing that now. Yeah, we're doing that now all we have done countless full bodies
And we've done human characters all over the world hundreds of them in fact. We've built over 5,000 animatronics here
You know nearly 500 for the Disney theme parks worldwide
Worked in 34 different countries we have figures all over the world lot of them are human and that
This one's special in that it is so
expressive and
We're in the midst of creating a new body for him that is fully electric that has
capabilities that have never been seen before either so when we combine the two it's gonna be quite an amazing figure and
That'll be happening real soon
We've also gone on to develop the next generation of human expressive head, too
So we've been working on that for some time now, and we're gonna make this even better. Oh yeah
Oh, yeah, what's on your bucket? Well. You know every time we design something like this or build something like this
you know just like any project you spend a year building something you get to the end and you've got a
Five-page list of everything that you'd have done differently and how you'd have made it better
You know so we have to keep going here. We have to keep doing R&D, but you know hopefully someday
You'll walk into our lobby
and you'll sign in and say hello to the
Receptionist and then later on will tell you that that wasn't even a real person that you were talking to and we want to really
Fool people and for most people who go to attractions go to theme parks
They may not know that this is work that you and your company have done
But they definitely see it improving over time
Sure things like this may make it into a Disney park or your local attraction it could very well
You know and people the lot of our clients and that's fine
And they don't like to let you know others know that we do a lot of what they do because it's if they you know
That's their their names on it you know, but we're happy to be behind the scenes
We're happy to be developing new and unique things like this that that really take theme parks ahead into the future that in places
They've never gone. Thank you so much Turner for sure a little back story on what you do here
Yeah, thank you for introducing me to Lincoln. Yeah, well. He's glad to meet you too. Thank you. Thank you
You