Last week at work, we got two days to make anything we want for whats known as The Jibjab Lab. This time around, I collaborated with Francisco Hernandez and Kevin Elam to create a remote controlled animatronic puppet. I've been dying to get into animatronics for a long time and this was the perfect opportunity to learn from a technology wizard like Francisco! While Francisco and I focused on building and making the puppet somehow work, Kevin was painting the ring. The main challenge for me was figuring out how to fuse the design with the technology that Francisco was building.
Here are some pictures of the work in progress...
After two or three sleepless nights, El Gigante was complete! As you can see in the video, our Luchador's movement is jerky, to say the least. However, I feel he has a certain charm to him and think he's super cool and hilarious. Awesome work gentlemen!
El Gigante from Mike Chiechi on Vimeo.