robotic dinosaurs are boring

[dyno77]

One of the most unimpressive exhibits are those of robotic or animatronic dinosaurs standing mostly static and only moving there jaws and arms and maybe they body....
I read an article long ago stating that by the early 2000s ,they would have robotic dinosaurs that could move on their own,so this clearly never happened....instead they seemed to have regressed ..
Id rather have life size sculpture or mural ,because it would have more life than boring robotics...
I know for the most part they are for younger fans ,but this is no excuse...
I dont know why they cant use the same standard that they use in films....but at the same time im aware that the industry isnt a big deal as it once was in the past...still its no excuse to have robotics with the same movements as they had decades ago .....
I am aware of a few exceptions but these are few and they are usually animatronic puppets with someone in the puppet...it does add something and is an improvement but far off from what was promised decades ago....

[BlueKrono]

It all comes down to profit margins. You can buy an amazing, walking animatronic for $500,000 and charge people $50 to see it, or you can buy one that just opens its mouth for $20,000 and charge people $30 to see it. Which do you think promoters go with? It seems the modern-day trend is to give people the cheapest product possible while charging them as much as you can get away with.

[stargatedalek]

The best option is to use simple, but custom built animatronics. Small subtle movements, rather than exaggerated but simplistic movements, and environments that play into the design to make them look natural.

[BlueKrono]

The best option is to use simple, but custom built animatronics. Small subtle movements, rather than exaggerated but simplistic movements, and environments that play into the design to make them look natural.

That would certainly appeal to adult biologists, but who are animatronic dinosaur exhibits marketed at? Kids. A roaring mouth, a huge tail sweep, or an intimidating lunge is going to thrill the most, and that's what the owners would be more likely to put down money for. To have dinosaurs with breathing mechanisms and other small, naturalistic movements would cost as much as the "wow factor" movements, and I'd be surprised if an exhibit ponied up the $$ to do that. Most that I've been to have been not even slightly concerned with anatomical realism. The cost of admission is earned by a parent's kid screaming "OMG dinosaurs!"

[stargatedalek]

The best option is to use simple, but custom built animatronics. Small subtle movements, rather than exaggerated but simplistic movements, and environments that play into the design to make them look natural.

That would certainly appeal to adult biologists, but who are animatronic dinosaur exhibits marketed at? Kids. A roaring mouth, a huge tail sweep, or an intimidating lunge is going to thrill the most, and that's what the owners would be more likely to put down money for. To have dinosaurs with breathing mechanisms and other small, naturalistic movements would cost as much as the "wow factor" movements, and I'd be surprised if an exhibit ponied up the $$ to do that. Most that I've been to have been not even slightly concerned with anatomical realism. The cost of admission is earned by a parent's kid screaming "OMG dinosaurs!"

Small movements are also far more cost effective. In a museum or other permanent setting, the illusion of an exhibit with living dinosaurs, even if all they tend to do is breathe, blink, and twitch their tails/raise their heads, would be pretty effective.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

One of the most unimpressive exhibits are those of robotic or animatronic dinosaurs standing mostly static and only moving there jaws and arms and maybe they body....
I read an article long ago stating that by the early 2000s ,they would have robotic dinosaurs that could move on their own,so this clearly never happened....instead they seemed to have regressed ..
Id rather have life size sculpture or mural ,because it would have more life than boring robotics...
I know for the most part they are for younger fans ,but this is no excuse...
I dont know why they cant use the same standard that they use in films....but at the same time im aware that the industry isnt a big deal as it once was in the past...still its no excuse to have robotics with the same movements as they had decades ago .....
I am aware of a few exceptions but these are few and they are usually animatronic puppets with someone in the puppet...it does add something and is an improvement but far off from what was promised decades ago....

As a HUGE fan of the early animatronic dinosaur, in particular those created by Dinamation and/or Kokoro I never found them boring. As a kid I felt  I was seeing REAL dinosaurs..we also never had fossil displays, I didn't see my first dinosaur skeleton articulated until the early 2000s.  The shows back them were productions. They had elements of theater and felt like a circus. Artists did their best to create some thing that looked life like and realistic.

Jurassic Park started putting an end to that in 93' when the animatronics seemed dated by comparison. Oddly the Jurassic Park Ride at the time wasn't much better.

The field of robotics has made improvements.  The Big Dog four legged robot ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ ) would be a great base to start with, but no one could afford it hence the military applications.

There hasn't been much change other to get cheaper and cheaper due to those issues mentioned above. Museums have very little in the way of budget.  So they rent instead of buy usually. 

There was supposed to be a huge endeavor in the Middle East to construct a state of the art animatronic dinosaur park, but the oil business there isn't what it was and it was slowly shelved along with a slew of other projects including a new Universal Studios theme park.

One museum has a Trex on display that recognizes the color red and will follow you with it's vision for a bit. A little unsettling to be sure. 

Disney created a dinosaur character pulling a wagon that walked and interacted on it's own , the power supply was kept in the wagon it was pulling, but it disappeared from the Animal Kingdom park sometime ago and hasn't reappeared.

Many of the better companies, like Dinamation went out of business.  There is one U.S. based company that bought a lot of their stock and is touring but I haven't had the chance to see them in person. 

What you are mostly seeing now is Chinese , Philippines or other robots created in those areas without a lot of thought or care except to put out a product as cheaply or quickly as possible.  They have contacted me personally offering a Trex for 5k.  The shows that tour using these are usually weekend affairs, similar to the lower cast of carnivals and sideshows offering similar fair. They buy these pieces put on a quick show and leave town with as much money as they can get. Often they display broken, damaged and just terrible looking pieces.  If one gets too damaged it's thrown in the trash and they buy another.   When this is the market your not going to get fantastic new technology.

Universal Studios recently refurbished their CA park ride with some new more advanced animatronics and the park in China also received a fantastic ride/land. 

All of this is a bit depressing to be honest and of course it gets worse as the people who barely look up from their phones get younger and younger.   Sure they may not do what a film does but I would hardly call any of them truly boring if you have a little imagination.

[Newt]

A few jumbled not-enough-coffee thoughts on the subject:


I am with @Blade-of-the-Moon ; Dinamax animatronics coming to the kids' science museum in the nearest big city were a highlight of my young life, and I badgered my poor parents into driving an hour or more so I could see them. Maybe kids are less easily impressed now than they were in the 80s, but I have certainly been around kids going ape over Dinamax's modern day equivalents.

There is a company here in Nashville called Animax that makes custom animatronics for theme parks and such. They had some videos with Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame showing the process of building some very impressive JP/JW-style animatronic dinos, I assume for Universal Studios theme park. I posted links to the videos here, but nobody responded. The videos have since been taken down from YouTube, likely at Universal's insistence, which is a shame as they were very interesting.


My point is that there are different grades of animatronic dinosaurs out there. Sophisticated animatronics are not only more expensive up front, they are also more delicate and more demanding of power and other infrastructure, which makes them unsuitable for traveling exhibits. Simple and robust are the criteria for anything that must be broken down, transported, and set back up every few months.


One of the points brought up in the videos is that animatronic dinosaurs for display are in some ways more difficult to build than their film counterparts, as film animatronics must only operate long enough to get their shots completed and display animatronics must work every day for years. Film animatronics can also include only the parts that will be seen on screen, and the necessary tangle of hoses and cables can be exposed as long as it won't be in-shot; not so for display animatronics.



My current workplace is a zoo; we will be hosting an animatronic dinosaur display later this spring. Workers are currently building boardwalks and pads. I believe the dinos are being supplied by Billings; if so, I've seen their work before and they have nice sculpts, even if the movements are of the limited sort the OP dislikes. I hope I get to see some of the installation process.

[GojiraGuy1954]

nah

[Halichoeres]

I posted links to the videos here, but nobody responded.

I think that means people liked them. Here on the forum, as elsewhere on the Internet, approval or support can only be expressed with 'like' buttons (regardless of whether a site actually has 'like' buttons); nobody will bother to respond to something with actual words except to correct someone, dunk on them, or wish death on their family. Silence means that at the very least nobody found the post objectionable.

[Gwangi]

I posted links to the videos here, but nobody responded.

I think that means people liked them. Here on the forum, as elsewhere on the Internet, approval or support can only be expressed with 'like' buttons (regardless of whether a site actually has 'like' buttons); nobody will bother to respond to something with actual words except to correct someone, dunk on them, or wish death on their family. Silence means that at the very least nobody found the post objectionable.

Or it could also be that people just don't know what to say. I personally don't want to say things like "I like that" or "cool". I feel like unless I have something meaningful to say or contribute it's better for me to just say nothing at all. It has always seemed like good forum etiquette to avoid commenting otherwise, since people have to click and scroll to read a comment it seems like the comments should be worth that effort. I've even been on forums where that sort of thing was discouraged. I can understand how it's disheartening when your effort isn't rewarded, I've been there, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't think perceived disinterest in a thread has anything to do with social media. Indeed, my experience with such things predates social media. I don't know how many articles and studies I posted on fish keeping forums without ever getting a comment, and that was 15-20 years ago.

Anyway, in this instance I'm not here to "dunk on someone" or correct them, I have something of value to share. A video I recently watched called The Decline of Dinamation that was very good and certainly relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYx2aHA-dVI

Also, I don't think animatronic dinosaurs are boring, even if their movements are limited, I just think it's cool to see life size reconstructions of extinct animals. Of course, quality counts. This thread reminds me that I have pictures of some robot dinosaurs I visited in the 90's that I've been meaning to share here. I suppose I should get on that.

EDIT: One final thought. Yes, I understand that a simple comment like "thank you for sharing" has value and I try to comment more often because of that. I was merely offering a perspective.

[Strepsodus]

I've seen that video on Dinamation, thought i thought that the Dougal Dixon future animatronics are a very interesting idea

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

A few jumbled not-enough-coffee thoughts on the subject:


I am with @Blade-of-the-Moon ; Dinamax animatronics coming to the kids' science museum in the nearest big city were a highlight of my young life, and I badgered my poor parents into driving an hour or more so I could see them. Maybe kids are less easily impressed now than they were in the 80s, but I have certainly been around kids going ape over Dinamax's modern day equivalents.

There is a company here in Nashville called Animax that makes custom animatronics for theme parks and such. They had some videos with Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame showing the process of building some very impressive JP/JW-style animatronic dinos, I assume for Universal Studios theme park. I posted links to the videos here, but nobody responded. The videos have since been taken down from YouTube, likely at Universal's insistence, which is a shame as they were very interesting.


My point is that there are different grades of animatronic dinosaurs out there. Sophisticated animatronics are not only more expensive up front, they are also more delicate and more demanding of power and other infrastructure, which makes them unsuitable for traveling exhibits. Simple and robust are the criteria for anything that must be broken down, transported, and set back up every few months.


One of the points brought up in the videos is that animatronic dinosaurs for display are in some ways more difficult to build than their film counterparts, as film animatronics must only operate long enough to get their shots completed and display animatronics must work every day for years. Film animatronics can also include only the parts that will be seen on screen, and the necessary tangle of hoses and cables can be exposed as long as it won't be in-shot; not so for display animatronics.



My current workplace is a zoo; we will be hosting an animatronic dinosaur display later this spring. Workers are currently building boardwalks and pads. I believe the dinos are being supplied by Billings; if so, I've seen their work before and they have nice sculpts, even if the movements are of the limited sort the OP dislikes. I hope I get to see some of the installation process.

Billings is the company that purchased most of the Dinamation warehouse stock. They have made more since, remade others, though there is still a bit of Dinamation there.   Would love to see pics of the setup, ect. My mom took a volunteer job in 93' with our local children's museum just so I could take pictures and video of it all. It was fascinating for me.   

I don't recall seeing your post, wish I had.  I'm in Northeast TN near Bristol. My aunt is actually in Nashville now visiting my cousins family there.

[Newt]

Billings is the company that purchased most of the Dinamation warehouse stock. They have made more since, remade others, though there is still a bit of Dinamation there.   Would love to see pics of the setup, ect. My mom took a volunteer job in 93' with our local children's museum just so I could take pictures and video of it all. It was fascinating for me.   

I don't recall seeing your post, wish I had.  I'm in Northeast TN near Bristol. My aunt is actually in Nashville now visiting my cousins family there.

I'll try to take some in-progress pics of the installation if I can and post them here. I'll definitely post pics of the completed installation.


If you ever make it to Nashville, give me a holler!

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Billings is the company that purchased most of the Dinamation warehouse stock. They have made more since, remade others, though there is still a bit of Dinamation there.   Would love to see pics of the setup, ect. My mom took a volunteer job in 93' with our local children's museum just so I could take pictures and video of it all. It was fascinating for me.   

I don't recall seeing your post, wish I had.  I'm in Northeast TN near Bristol. My aunt is actually in Nashville now visiting my cousins family there.

I'll try to take some in-progress pics of the installation if I can and post them here. I'll definitely post pics of the completed installation.


If you ever make it to Nashville, give me a holler!

Awesome.  Same here, i have a 6 acre dino park might be worth the detour

[Halichoeres]

@Gwangi sorry I was aiming for 'sardonic joke about Internet solipsism' and landed on 'whiny meta-commentary on forum conduct,' which is unfortunate since the latter is the genre of comment I find most annoying (keenly aware that saying so commits the sin it condemns). Anyway this is actually the first forum I ever joined, so I appreciate that perspective. I guess my point of comparison is when I ran a blog and web comic in the early aughts, and the way the loose community of other bloggers and comic artists interacted. Maybe that's apples and oranges.

[HD-man]

As a HUGE fan of the early animatronic dinosaur, in particular those created by Dinamation and/or Kokoro I never found them boring. As a kid I felt  I was seeing REAL dinosaurs..we also never had fossil displays, I didn't see my first dinosaur skeleton articulated until the early 2000s.  The shows back them were productions. They had elements of theater and felt like a circus. Artists did their best to create some thing that looked life like and realistic.

I love Kokoro's robot dinos in general & their raptors in particular (varying lack of wing feathers notwithstanding). As far as I've seen, RoboSue is still the best robot dino exhibition in terms of appearance/behavior/signage:

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

As a HUGE fan of the early animatronic dinosaur, in particular those created by Dinamation and/or Kokoro I never found them boring. As a kid I felt  I was seeing REAL dinosaurs..we also never had fossil displays, I didn't see my first dinosaur skeleton articulated until the early 2000s.  The shows back them were productions. They had elements of theater and felt like a circus. Artists did their best to create some thing that looked life like and realistic.

I love Kokoro's robot dinos in general & their raptors in particular (varying lack of wing feathers notwithstanding). As far as I've seen, RoboSue is still the best robot dino exhibition in terms of appearance/behavior/signage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxkAQb-TrQU

I'd love to see that exhibit. The last Kokoro exhibit I saw was part of the Ripley's Aquarium tour.  It was cool but it was the older robots, and they felt limited in movement. I also understand, but I detest when they turn them down and/or place them in basic mode instead of the full action.

[Funk]

I'd agree today because most of them are really ugly, but the Dinamation robots of the 90s were pretty stunning design-wise, they almost didn't even have to move to be impressive.

[stargatedalek]

I remember seeing those raptors (and the partially feathered one above) visit locally over the years. They were an awful lot more impressive than most of the other stuff that you can find. I genuinely think bar a select few exceptions the quality, especially in the visual design, of the animatronics has gone drastically downhill.

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

I think animatronic dioramas are great if they're pulled off well. My favorite is the prehistoric diorama from Epcot's Universe of Energy ride.



Sadly, I never got to experience it because I didn't realize it was still running when I visited the park. The ride has unfortunately closed since. This is the type of animatronic exhibit I think would work best in museums, with such a detailed, immersive environment.

I also got to see some of the Billings dinosaurs myself at T-Rex Cafe down in Walt Disney World. It was great, but the dinosaurs don't look as good as the Dinamation originals, and the environment is all over the place, between having an ice cave and coral reef alongside the forest area where the dinosaurs are. Obviously it was meant to appeal primarily to kids and creating a naturalistic environment wasn't a priority. I'm a big fan of Rainforest Cafe, and I think their animals are better-looking than T-Rex's dinosaurs.

I don't care much for the generic Asian animatronic dinosaurs that come and go at museums and zoos, so if you've only seen them I can't blame you for thinking they're boring. Especially with some of the awful traveling shows and exhibits that have been making their rounds. Genuinely good animatronic exhibits seem to be few and far between anymore.