History
Greg has years of experience and expertise in creating the illusion of
artificial life. Greg and partners Chris Chitty and Matt Ward founded
Robotechnology in 1991, Australia’s first company specialising in designing and building animatronics for
themeparks, film and television. Notably amongst a vast array of other
projects, Robotechnology designed numerous animatronic characters for Babe.
After the success of Babe, Greg and Matt moved on from Robotech to pursue other
interests and Greg has since collaborated with numerous other companies on a
wide range of projects such as Babe 2, The Matrix, Farscape, Peter Pan, Racing
Stripes, Star Wars Ep III Revenge of the Sith and innumerable television
adverts.
Due to their complexity, all animatronic projects are collaborations with numerous talented individuals and the work
featured here also includes the labour of many others. On some of the
non-Robotech projects featured here Greg has also collaborated with Sonny
Tilders, Trevor Tighe, and sculptors Dave Elsey, Martin Rezzard, Nick and Paul
from MEG, Richard Mueck , Paul Trefry, Warren Kelly, John Cox, Jason Baird,
John Searle, and Belinda Villani.
Video samples
This is just a tiny sample of animatronics projects worked on over the years.
The green Star Wars nemoidian alien was mechanised by Sonny Tilders and Lip
Synch programming and control system developed by Greg based on Gilderfluke software and components. Here it is in the process of being programmed with
dialogue for episode III.
The red mon calamari Star Wars character was intended as a non featured background alien extra and
was built in only a few days. It is shown held by sculptor Richard Mueck and is
animated live only using simple RC sets. Like the nemoidian Alien, the mask is
to be worn on an actors head and the actor makes no contribution to the facial
performance. Richard’s hand is making no contribution to its movements either.
The huge croc built for John Cox on “Peter Pan” had hydraulic mechs designed by Trevor Tighe. The Slave system is based on Greg’s voodoo control concepts and “delayed precision” to give organic quality to movements . Sonny Tilders’ facial mechs are electronically mixed using Gilderfluke.
Dave Elsey models an unpainted giant hand sculpted by Martin Rezard and
mechanised by Greg in a single day for Farscape. Leg extensions are worn by
Adrian Getley for the Namtar character of Farscape. The sharks were mechanised by robotech for a Jackie Chan film.
Videos
Lip Synch
Shark swims
What a croc
Give a big hand to Dave
Leg warmers
Mon Calamari
What a load of $@#%?!
A winning smile
Do Androids dream of Electric sheep?
The Robotech crew sure did for “Babe”. Twelve sheep characters were designed and built in only a few months and were
filmed on location in Robertson surrounded a flock of real live sheep. With
real fleece and smelling and moving like genuine farm animals, even the real flock could not tell the difference. The
sheep were sculpted by Belinda Villani and rubber skins made by John Cox.
Christine Nagy tailored their stylish fleeces. Greg, Matt and Chris from
Robotech made the animatronics. No detail was spared. The talking sheep heads
designed and built by Greg even had robotic tongues that could lick or help
pronounce words, and some special versions even had animatronic bums! Yes,
their motorised bottoms were loaded up with carefully sculpted fake poo pellets
and could poo on cue. Surely the pinacle of robotics technology has been
reached!
Click on the sheep bums below right to see if everything worked out OK.
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water.
These marine creatures are fully operational in open ocean. The 38 foot long
full size humpback whale was an ocean going wet-submersible with ballast tanks,
working blowhole, eyes and flukes, and caused more than a few raised eyebrows
when on his custom trailer travelling down the highway. Greg sculpted and built
the full size duplicate of “Old Tom” for the ABC production “Killers in Eden”. Tom could dive and surface at speed and had a working blowhole. The great white was sculpted by John Cox and John Searle with animatronics by
Robotech. He was designed to operate realistically in seawater alongside real
sharks yet produce no electrical disturbance which would upset his live
bretheren. Click his pic to see him in action in Jackie Chan comedy/action
flick “First Strike”.
No need to get in a flap
These flying creatures were built with extreme care to match the real physiology
of live animals. For the Pelican from Babe Pig in the City, each individual
flight feather was mounted so that it would overlap and progressively splay as
the wings open and closed. The wings could sweep , retract, extend and twist as
well as flap. However after Greg had studied Pelican flight for months and
designed the animatronics to be capable of exactly duplicating pelican flight
movements, puppeteers with little knowledge about birds or flying programmed him to flap as
though he was swimming in treacle. Oh well..
Ferdy the duck was fitted with a high powered flapping mechanism and adjustable wing extension and wing sweep.
He generated a remakable amount of lift and thrust due to his natural wing
stroke and realistic feathering work by Val Jones.
The Dragonfly was built by Greg and M.E.G. for an award winning Sony TV advert.
The accurate polycarbonate twisting wing structure also generated a huge amount
of lift when operated at speed.
Staying one jump ahead
The kangaroo was built in 1991 for a feature that never made it to screen yet
the technological advancements and approach of building characters to be shot
on location outdoors paved the way for Babe and movies which followed. The ten
foot tall tin man was a shopping centre character who could run 7 days a week
for years at a time without need for maintenance. With a video camera hidden in
his head he could break off his prerecorded routines and interact live with
shoppers.
