Talk:Animatronics

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 August 2020 and 24 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Agrawalr.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Article needs a lot of work
There's so much information that could be added to this article to beef it up, anyone able to do the research? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.122.233.242 (talk) 06:22, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Mainly ref 203.38.71.68 (talk) 07:14, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * There's been a lot of good work since the 2009 comment above. It is close to C class now in my assessment. -—Kvng 19:06, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It’s b now 69.53.89.23 (talk) 21:30, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Android
The term android, coming from the Greek andres, technically refers to only "male" humanoids. It might be apropos to mention the term "gynoid". 138.67.185.93 (talk) 00:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Sources for content
I'm starting a collection of potential sources to improve content. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 04:48, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Theme parks, films predominantly using animatronics - http://www.theatrecrafts.com/page.php?id=7

Write up about Walking With Dinosaurs, revival of animatronics versus CGI - http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/aug/12/animatronics-dinosaurs-live-show

Some animatronic tech overviews - http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/robots/6-6ool-and-creepy-animatronic-advancements#slide-1

Stan Winston, did animatronic work for The Ghost and the Darkness, T2 3-D: Battle Across Time and AI: Artificial Intelligence

History of animatronics - http://roborobotics.com/Animatronics/history-of-animatronics.html

Enthiran, award winning film using animatronics, with special effects built by Legacy Effects

Early history of Audio-Animatronics (primary source) - http://www.waltdisney.org/storyboard/early-days-audio-animatronics%C2%A9

Similarity to Automaton
The two subjects are similar, but different. Would it be a good idea to include a section about automatons, perhaps in the context of the history/development section? -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 16:00, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Would be hard not to include them. Examples of first, i.e. first automaton x to be designed making use of new automatronic technique y, would seem to first quite well at first glance. Not sure a specific section would help, better just included in the article as and when relevent in my view. CSJJ104 (talk) 17:54, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Disputed Statement
Within the Audio-Animatronics section there is a statement about Walt Disney having purchased the bird which helped to spark his interest in animatronics while in New Orleans, but I found an alternative reference which mentions him having purchased the bird while on vacation in Europe.David Condrey (talk) 01:50, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * We could do something like "Walt Disney purchased the bird while he was vacationing, although it is disputed wither it was in New Orleans or Europe." and put the cites behind New Orleans and Europe respectively. Hopefully that wouldn't be considered a synthesis. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 04:00, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * This link says that it either came from New Orleans or France. Horai 551 04:06, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it would be better if we omit mentioning either New Orleans or Europe and just leave it at ..."while he was vacationing." ```Buster Seven   Talk  19:53, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that it would be worth leaving as a disputed statement in hopes of discovering in fact where it came from, as this origin information could be of interest to someone in the future. David Condrey   log talk  06:46, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Design Section
Does anyone know why this section has been formatted as an indented list? Not necessarily a problem, but subsections for each type of design would seem more usual. CSJJ104 (talk) 23:23, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Looking through the history, that content appeared here by who appears to have been a student. It was their only contribution ever, other than creating their user page and adding themselves to the class page. -- Nick  Penguin ( contribs ) 03:25, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I condensed this to two paragraphs, it reads a little better now. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 17:33, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Singular or Plural?
This source says mechatronics requires a singular verb. If I read it correctly. Actually it sounds like the author isn't alltogether sure it's singular.--Melody Lavender (talk) 18:49, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Quotes
What do people think about moving the (in this case) quite long quotes out of references and into a separate footnotes section? CSJJ104 (talk) 18:11, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Suggest deletion of the companies and professionals list sections
I'd like to suggest deleting, foremost, the Animatronics article section, and ideally the Animatronics section as well. I could see leaving the companies list and listing only the most prominent companies (require that companies listed must have a wikilink) but the list of craftsman in the profession.. I can't see any reason to keep this one.

I don't feel that either of these two lists offer much in the way of value to the article and are just filler; they also stand the chance of becoming an avenue for companies and people to advertise themselves by adding to the list, and the list growing to a very large size. As an alternative, I think writing a prose section highlighting a few of the most prominent companies and craftsman (if any are notable enough for mention) would be far better, but even this is unnecessary content in my opinion unless there are highly notable companies / individuals that should be mentioned that aren't mentioned in other sections (like Disney which would be the first I'd think of mentioning but since the company is already mentioned heavily in other sections, there's little need to bring it up again).

If you'd rather not delete the sections, perhaps at least consider separating them into independent pages and just linking to the list article here so they don't bog down the size of the article unnecessarily.

Side note: I hate lists in Wikipedia articles unless they have a really good reason for being. Anything I see a list I start developing a weird twitch, I should see a dr. maybe. lol

David Condrey (talk) 09:29, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) That
 * is
 * a
 * 1) very
 * 2) good
 * 3) point

...

*twitch*--Coin945 (talk) 10:20, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I would rather keep the list of animatronicists and delete the list of companies, feeling that there is no reason not to include details of the individuals who have contributed to the subjects development, but the companies list could be interpreted as advertisement, and may be open to being used as such.CSJJ104 (talk) 10:52, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I added these lists basically just to increase content, I have no particular attachment to them and they do have the relevant categories - Category:Animatronicists Category:Animatronics companies. The list of animatronicists might be good to keep, the company one can just be integrated into the relevant sections in ways like "MOVIE featured anaimatronic BLANK, created by COMPANY." or some such. Companies with no easily accessible bod of work can just be removed. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 16:06, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Removed statement and ref about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea's squid which read as follows:

Statement: animatronic model of the giant squid in the 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Reference: Quoted from Reference: Initially, the concept was developed for Disney Studios, which used a giant squid in the 1954 film version 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

I reviewed the reference and believe that the reference was misinterpreted. Within the references article, animatronics is only mentioned after the squid, but does not specify that the squid was in fact an animatronic, it does however explicitly mentions the birds in Mary Poppins as being animatronic.

Further, leading me to believe this is incorrect and initially prompting me to look into it, the numerous other references listed throughout the article which relate to the time period. Several other references mention the film Mary Poppins as the first so between that, and the iffiness of the writing of the Wisegeek reference, I am lead to assume that Wisegeek is either incorrect or simply misinterpreted which is totally understandable due to the articles poor writing. I had to read the sentence several times, closely, before I noticed that it may be misleading. David Condrey (talk) 11:31, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * My error, poor use of an unreliable source. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 16:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, whomever wrote that article just needs to learn to write better too. It's very misleading..  Thx.
 * Sidenote.. I saw you moved the timeline out of the Film specific section and into the more general history section. I'd put it in Film because all the events were limited to events related to film.  Since you moved it out, I expanded the items listed to not just film related..  Potatoes, tomatos.  :) David Condrey (talk) 09:54, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Deep nested Sections
I got a bit carried away expanding the article this evening and even as I was drafting it, I felt I was getting a bit deep in the nesting of new sections. If someone agrees, feel free to restructure it better. Thx. David Condrey (talk) 11:31, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Timeline
I would personally discourage using this infographic as a source (currently ref no. 14, the only reference in the timeline section) as it itself references this article as a source. The interpretation of the graphic in the article may also be wrong as 1989 is given as a date before a Disney film adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, no notable film adaptations being made since 1982. The other sources used for the inforgraphic may be useful, however. Tomásdearg92 (talk) 20:22, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I've tagged the first instance of the ref as unreliable (verify credibility). Finnusertop (talk &#124; guestbook &#124; contribs) 12:16, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I removed the poor reference completely and replaced it with numerous better citations since it had been referenced in several places. David Condrey (talk) 06:49, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Removed reference
I just removed http://www.garnerholt.com/ghp-inc/about-us/faq.aspx which was being used as a citation in the lead, as it wasn't needed due to the article content including relevent details, and this is where citations should be placed WP:WHYCITE. Still a seemingly valid reference, so I leave it here for others. CSJJ104 (talk) 23:58, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Lead
The article lead could be reworked to better include newly added content to the article. Additionally, I am unclear if it is currently close to being detailed for a lead section. CSJJ104 (talk) 00:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Restructured article a bit today. Felt rather fragmented and not well organized so I combined a few sections and moved the order around a bit to improve flow.  Reworked lead section and supplemented with new Etymology section.David Condrey (talk) 22:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Areas of attention
Some areas that could still use a lot of attention in this article, I think, would be more details on the construction of animatronics (material used, methods, etc..); as well, computer/programming methods/etc.. hasn''t been mentioned at all yet. Theories related to how animatronics are designed to mimick real life very briefly got a mention with a statement I added about the two influential theories but could certainly justify more..

Also added a section in history about the earliest modern animatronics which, at the time were called robots, but are in fact animatronics. The earliest ones I found were from the 1939 World's Fair but between then and now there must have been more.. Could find info on that subject and start compounding that new section under history.

The section titled 'Audio-Animatronics' could really use a bit of a rewrite in my opinion. There's plenty more valuble information that can be added to that section about the early days of the Imagineering team and their first projects (the successful ones and the not so successful ones), and info on how they went about getting started since they had to pave the way.. David Condrey (talk) 10:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi! You have nominated Animatronics for peer review. I fixed the citation CS1 errors and provided citations to the bit that was marked citation needed. I also fixed typos (via X!'s tools). It's always good to make sure that uncontroversial improvements like this are made before asking someone to point out what needs to be done. There's one 'further explanation needed' tag that should be deal with. Other than that and some more automated tips, I think someone at peer review can provide us with invaluable help:) Finnusertop (talk &#124; guestbook &#124; contribs) 00:10, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Etymology
An edit was made to Etymology that I think can be improved further.. what do you guys think.

Referring to "Animatronics is portmanteau of animate and electronics" The term "portmanteau" just seems rather obscure. I had to look it up. Should it be simplified more layman? David Condrey  log talk  09:33, 21 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Compare the the second lines of smog, brunch and motel. IMHO, portmanteau really is the best description, and wikilinks exist to explain or elaborate on such terms as they may be unfamiliar or intriguing to the reader. Tomásdearg92 (talk) 20:03, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

origin of base term "animatronics"
The article has a generally impressive amount of history, and tells us that "audio-animatronics" was coined by Disney in 1961 (or earlier?) -- but leaves the reader completely confused about when/where/who coined the base term "animatronics". Please add such specifics. -71.174.176.136 (talk) 22:42, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added tag to http://www.waltdisney.org/storyboard/early-days-audio-animatronics%C2%A9
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Undetected vandalism
Someone added this https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animatronics&diff=747707323 completely unsourced fact in 2016 which is likely just nonsense related to a five nights at Freddie’s character and Mario — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:7480:95F0:F5E4:D9FE:4A80:651B (talk) 15:42, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Please clarify definition of animatronics
Please could someone clarify in the article the difference between an animatronic puppet and a human-controlled puppet - or clarify whether or not there is a difference? For example, is it a matter of whether the controls involve electricity or other non-human power, as opposed to direct human power only? Does indirect human control, e.g. pulling levers and strings, count as animatronic?

For the reason why I'm asking this, please see Little Amal. When I created the article, I defined the puppet in the header as animatronic, because the puppeteer inside the puppet controls the movement of the head, eyes and mouth indirectly by levers, strings, etc. In other words, he/she is not actually putting a hand inside the head and turning the hand to turn the puppet's head, but is positioned inside the body of the puppet, pulling levers and strings. The puppet's torso can be bent forward by the use of levers also. As I understand it, there is no electricity or other non-human power involved. (ETA update: the eyes are controlled by a small computer).

Maybe I misunderstood the Animatronics article when I described Little Amal as animatronic? So please clarify the definition so that I can get this right for sure. The clarification needs to be in the article with a citation. Thank you. Storye book (talk) 10:45, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Structural Edits
Hey guys,

I made a couple edits to the article. I mainly just moved some things around so that the topics would fall more in line with the section headings.


 * Moved the contents of the Etymology section to the top section, as I didn’t feel like it was substantial enough to justify needing its own section.
 * Moved the “Timeline” section to the “History” section as a subheading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exhausted Lemon (talk • contribs) 01:11, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Some More Edits
Hey guys,

I made a couple edits to the article.
 * Rewrote the lead paragraph to better introduce the concept
 * Removed “origins in automata “ section and added the sentence to the lead paragraph
 * Condensed the multiple subheadings in the “Design” section to three subheadings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exhausted Lemon (talk • contribs) 05:31, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Timeline
Is there anything that can be done about the timeline? It holds a lot of important historical information for this topic, but its current incarnation just doesn't look particularly good. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exhausted Lemon (talk • contribs) 02:43, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 07:51, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Futuroscope (France 2014) 04 RoboThespian.JPG

The word "animatronics"
In common parlance, "animatronic" is a noun that refers to animatronic characters. This article seems to deliberate avoid referring to them with that noun, instead using the term "animatronics characters" and other such language. May I ask why this was done? Is there a particular reason? Delukiel (talk) 21:52, 8 August 2023 (UTC)