Anatomorphex - Animals

ANIMALS

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	Specifications: One 8 foot tall, life-size animatronic walkaround suit. Materials: Foam latex, fibreglass, fur, soft foam, spandex, glass eyes and mechanisms. Movements: Head turn, body, arms, eyes & lids, brows, mouth, lips, nose and ears.

AN026 GRIZZLY BEAR
BENQ cellphone 'The Bear' commercial. Jeff Chang, director.
also- BUDWEISER 'Campers' commercial. Lloyd Stein, director.

There is a lot more to our Grizzly Bear Suit suit than meets the eye. It consists of: a substructure 'muscle' suit, a four way stretch, outer fur suit, an animatronic head supported above the actor's head on a backpack, two mechanical extension arms and two feet.

Muscle Suit- A full lifecast body of our suit performer was molded and cast for this project. A spandex danceskin with a heavily reinforced zipper pulled over this bodycast provided the foundation of the suit. The anatomical shape and muscle masses of a very large and accurate taxidermy form provided excellent references for our muscle suit's measurements and proportions. All the major muscle masses of a real Grizzly Bear were replicated in soft foam (with stiffer foam for bony landmarks like shoulder blades) and sewn into protective spandex covers onto the danceskin on the actor's lifecast body form. Created in this way, when an actor moves within our suit, all the muscle groups and body masses of a real bear follow his movements exactly. Fitting a person into the shape of a bear is not an easy job- the crotch and butt have to be cheated much lower than the actor's. We built ours so he could actually sit and roll around on his bottom the way real bears do.

Animatronic Head- Cheating proportion in the other direction, the head needed to be higher than the actor's head. Our actor actually sees and breathes through a ventilated fur section in the front of the bear's neck. The animatronic head is mounted to a backpack on three very large linear servos that control the up/down, side to side and tilt functions of the head.

The head was sculpted and molded, and the skin was cast in prosthetic foam latex, a material that moves very well with remote control servo-motors and is lightweight. The foam head was painted where the skin would show through- the nose, lips, eyelids and ears. The top of the head was covered with fur, and shorter hairs were electrostatically flocked onto the bear's snout. The hair transitions -those between the furred and flocked areas- were hand punched, as were the whiskers. The entire palate -or inside of the mouth, including tongue, gums and teeth- was sculpted, molded, cast and painted, so that every detail would be accounted for when our bear roared. The face is animated with fourteen remote control servo motors, providing movement for the ears, brows, eyes, eyelids, nose, each side of both lips -for lip-synch 'talking'- as well as the jaw for wide open/close.

Fur Suit, Extension Arms and Feet- The body fur suit is made out of special, color blended hair, custom woven into a four-way stretch bias backing that allows the fur to stretch with every move and not wrinkle at areas that bunch up or twist. The arms extend a good deal beyond the actor's arms with safe rubber claws. The arms mechanically pivot independantly at both the palms and the wrists. The feet are furred, have safe rubber claws and thick soles -providing for the actor's safety on all sorts of rough terrain.

Performance- As with any puppet, a suit is only as good as its performers -they give it that final magic, and bring it to life. In addition to the performance of the actor in the suit, the electronics that bring all this fur and foam to life, require five remote control radio operators to simultaneously operate all the movements our Grizzly Bear can deliver.

In the BENQ cellphone spot, our suit performer was called on to push our Grizzly suit all out, performing take after take of Michael Jackson style dance moves, in heavy Taiwan humidity. As the commercial here shows, the performer and suit held up solidly, and the clients were very pleased with our energetic performance.

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