Upcoming Mystery Project...Sneak Peak!

A few months ago we got an incredible email from the Make-a-Wish Foundation after they had received a very unique wish...a custom spooky animatronic of "Bon" the Bunny from "The Walten Files".

The Walten Files is an animated horror series on YouTube. It’s a sort of FNAF-inspired, mascot horror where some animatronic characters at a burger restaurant come to life and get up to all sorts of no good. It's ultra creepy!!

Long story short, there's a special kid who really wants an animatronic of this and we decided to take on the challenge of bringing this 2D character to life as a giant 3D real-life animatronic!

(The skull is temporary!! Just thought it looked fun.)

We don't really ever build things for other people. We build our own props for our videos but we're rarely concerned with making sure it's going to last a long time or be safe or user-friendly for someone else.

This one has presented a whole new slew of challenges though. It has to look exactly like the character, work incredibly well, last for a long time, be safe to use indoors, be awesome, etc. etc. etc.!!

Those are all things you may take for granted when you see a prop video, but they actually add a LOT of complexity that we're discovering as we build this. We wont be happy if we build them something and it breaks in a year. We really want this to be special, so we're going all out and pushing ourselves in every area.

It has several motors and movement points. One of which is this rotating waist mech that Jay built from scratch using a wiper motor and pillow block bearings. The frame is custom cut and welded and he built custom brackets to hold the motor secure. It also has a totally custom electronic control box with the prop and motor controllers, etc.

Jaimie designed a new poseable arm system using camera tripod ball joints! Very clever and it worked incredibly well!! She even figured out we could use a bendable tripod for the fingers so now the Shoulders, Elbow, Wrist, and Fingers are all poseable!

The folks are Fright Props donated a Talking/Moving Skull that we're taking apart in order to build the head so the head, eyes, and jaw all move. We have some seriously fun stuff lined up for this!!

The body parts are foam sculpted and we're slowly working our way through all this.

The family will be visiting our shop next week to help us finish it up and see the result so we are HUSTLING to get this thing done on time... 😅

It feels great to be building something for such an amazing cause, but boy are we feeling the pressure. Also we're working on a bunch of new Halloween ideas that we're excited to get started on. Oh, and the new shop build out is going well? And the kids start school in a week and a half? And what else? 😱 There are so many things going on........

We appreciate all of you and hope you're having a wicked good week! 😄

~J&J 🤘🤘