While some creatures used in films are completely animated by their animatronic parts, most of them are partially animated by actors or puppeteers. Creatures seen in one of the Star Wars movies are a great example of actors, animatronics, and puppeteers working together. The video “The creatures of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” (Star Wars, 2013) visits the Star Wars movie’s creature workshop. In one of the visits backstage, we see how an animatronic head is being animated with a wireless controller while the actor is wearing the head on stage.
Figure 1. People animating a Star Wars animatronic from backstage. (Star Wars, 2013)
The movie War Horse by (Spielberg, 2011) showcases a full-body animatronic of the horse Joey used particularly for the animal-unfriendly scenes. The horse’s body manipulated from beneath using control rods while the face is driven by radio-controlled servos as seen in the video “The making of Joey” (Parish, 2014).
Figure 2. Horse animatronic manipulated by rods from beneath. (Parish, 2014)
A different type of animatronic found in amusement parks is the “Audio-Animatronics”, a Disney trademark. According to (Theatrecrafts, 2020), an audio-animatronic “describes the synchronization of mechanical figures and an audio soundtrack. The early audio-animatronic figures were triggered by audio frequency pulses recorded on magnetic tape. Different frequencies cause metal reeds, tuned to respond to each frequency, to vibrate, operating switches which operated one mechanism controlling the robotic figures.”
Figure 3. Na’vi shaman: a life-like audio-animatronic created by Disney’s Imagineers. (Bishop, 2017)