Animatronics
www.parkworld-online.com
Daniels Wood Land
Daniels Wood Land designs, fabricates, and installs innovative experiences for clients all over the world. Its products range from themed cabins and tree houses, to shooting galleries and themed sets to animatronic characters and chainsaw carvings. Andy Dauterman, director of custom and theming projects, speaks to editor Bryony Andrews about upcoming projects and the company’s work in animatronics
What is the creative process behind your animatronics offering? Animatronics are a natural fit as part of our theming services and a major component in our shooting galleries. We design and fabricate animatronic characters completely in-house. It all starts with a design either created by us or provided by our client. Then shop drawings that detail the armature and the character’s requested actions/movements, followed by sculpting a master and making a mold of the face and hands. Then we affix the skins to the armature, and dress, program, and finalise the character. From start to finish it is about a six to eight week process depending on the complexity of the character.
Can you tell us about your use of animatronics on one of your recent projects? Were there any challenges? We are currently working on a large, walk-through pirate themed shooting gallery experience for a new amusement park in Galveston TX (scheduled to open in 2019). It will feature nine highly themed rooms, wireless gun technologies, and over 20 animatronic characters which will tell the story of a pirate captain and his hidden treasure. We are building the entire attraction at our facility before shipping it to the client site, so it has taken up most of our shop space. But this is a critical step to minimize our time onsite and ensure it functions as expected.
How do you integrate special effects with animatronics to enhance production values and ensure your projects are memorable for visitors? We use a wide assortment of pneumatically- and electronically-activated props, lights, and sounds to enhance our animatronic products. For the Mystic Timbers roller coaster at Kings Island, we integrated activated props like clinging saw blades, sliding lockers, rattling chains and dropping air ducts tied to projected effects (supplied by Holovis) to create a fully integrated show that happens at the end of the ride. This integration has greatly enhanced the overall value of the show to create that memorable experience for park guests.
Has the increase in demand for virtual reality experience-based projects affected demand for animatronics? While we haven’t seen a downturn in the demand for animatronics, we have been working on ways to integrate
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VR/AR types of technologies into our shooting galleries and animatronic shows to offer a larger entertainment value to our customers. Finding ways to offer customers a larger suite of services is a focus for us. We’ve forged great relationships with VR/AR vendors and have successfully partnered to offer customers a ‘one stop’ solution to their amusement and entertainment needs.
What can we look forward to from Daniels Wood Land in 2018 and beyond? We are currently fabricating themed environments for two new attractions at Madame Tussaud’s properties in Orlando and Sydney (set to open in June 2018). These will feature highly detailed sets, along with interactives, to showcase their amazing figures. We are also shipping a record number of shooting galleries to customers around the globe.
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