Imagineers finding new ways to bring larger than life characters to the parks

Stupido

Well-Known Member
I wonder what the list of characters would be?

The wampa from Star Wars clearly, Ralph? Hulk at Avengers Campus? Louis the Alligator for Splash Mountain area?

Regardless, seeing updates to character options is always exciting to me. Especially if they're making them look less and less like people in costumes.
 

ToTBellHop

Well-Known Member
I wonder what the list of characters would be?

The wampa from Star Wars clearly, Ralph? Hulk at Avengers Campus? Louis the Alligator for Splash Mountain area?

Regardless, seeing updates to character options is always exciting to me. Especially if they're making them look less and less like people in costumes.
Imagine Thanos walking around DCA snapping his finger…shiver.
 

celluloid

Well-Known Member
It's kind of odd that they would even advertise this. They've always shown behind the scenes on attractions and animatronics, but have always treated any character performer as "real".

It depends on the goal. We have seen CM's as characters running for their lives from gas leaks in Fantasyland in retrospect specials among many other things that would spoil the illusion. Within the park, the attractions and characters are real.
 

kevlightyear

Well-Known Member
This project was highlighted in a recent NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/business/media/disney-parks-robots.html.

Relevant portions:

In another area of the Glendale warehouse, behind more black curtains, another team of Imagineers was working on the opposite challenge: Project Exo, a high-tech effort to enable interactions between theme park visitors and large-scale characters.

“As in the Incredible Hulk?” I asked, noticing a giant hand (albeit not a green one) with fingers that could move and grasp with humanlike precision.

Crickets.
....
Asya Cara Peña, a ride development engineer, piped up with a rudimentary explanation. They were developing a full-body exoskeleton that could be applied to a wide variety of oversize characters — and that counteracted the force of gravity. Because of safety concerns, not to mention endurance, the weight of such hulking costumes (more than 40 pounds) could not rest entirely or even mostly on a puppeteer’s shoulders. Instead, it needed to be redirected to the ground.

“But it also needs to look natural and believable,” Ms. Peña said. “And it has to be something that different performers of different body types with different gaits can slip into with identical results.”
 

kevlightyear

Well-Known Member
And I see there's already a thread about it
including the video Steve posted.
 

wdrive

Well-Known Member
Seems a little odd to show them in the process of creating costumes? Why not show us how a Mickey head works too? Or what brand of makeup Maleficent uses?
 

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