Customer Reviews

Animatronics: Guide to Holiday Displays

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a great book. If you like to build haunted houses, and want to add some moving and jumping animatronics to your haunt, you need this book. Commercial, finished animatronics cost thousands of dollars. You can build them yourself, do a higher-quality job, save a ton of money, and have a lot of fun doing it, using this book.

Also, I can, with some confidence, say that this is the ONLY book in existence that covers this subject matter. There are tons of books on robotics out there, but those are really solving a different problem. You probably aren't trying to spend months building a complex robot with a dozen servo-motors, sophisticated movement, and reasoning skills. You are trying to spend a few days building a ghoul that pops out a trash can when patrons draw near. This book is for the latter. I have looked hard, and near as I can tell, this is the only book that covers that type of material.

This book starts at the perfect place for the only slightly clued home builder (you know how to operate your cordless drill, but you only have a vague notion of what a bushing is). In a highly-readable way, the author moves you to the point where you can comfortably grab a motor, a motion sensor, some linkage parts and a pile of steel tubing or wood or PVC pipe and build a fairly sophisticated animated figure. By the end, you'll know about leverage and 4-bar mechanisms and the supporting electronics.

This book does not have recipes for building a ton of specific animations. It works through several specific examples in detail (a figure pops-up out of a trash can, a witch stirs a cauldron, etc.), but the idea is that you use your knowledge to design and build your own haunted house ideas.

I like the style of the book. The author is informal and often amusing; he has a dry wit. But none of that annoying folksy tone that you sometimes see in other books. Just comfortable and accessible.

I found that there was one odd thing about this book. It might be because the book is a few years old. The book does a great job telling you how to construct mechanisms that move. It does a great job of telling you various methods for triggering a movement. However, when it gets to the part in-between, where you need to connect the trigger to your motors, the book for some reason descends to fairly sophisticated low-level electronics. The author tells you to buy diodes, micro-farad capacitors, 100K resistors, and 555 timer chips, and breadboard them together. And then proceeds to teach an entry-level college electronics course at the end of the book, so you can tie it all together. Yikes! This is fun, to be sure, but it's at the wrong level of abstraction, and could take you days to decipher and perhaps even weeks when you throw in debugging time. At this point, there are many stores, both online and retail, that sell inexpensive controllers for these purposes, for regular motors, servo-motors, light and sound timing, etc. You just plug in your sensors and motors and lights into these devices, turn a few knobs to record the sequence of events, and you are done. If you are a haunter, you want to get the job done by building your mechanisms, slapping on a few sensors and an off-the-shelf controller, and then move onto the next cool project for your haunted house. You don't want to solder NAND gates and try to control the frequency of square waves to control an R/C servo-motor. Again, perhaps the author went to first principles in this part of the book because these off-the-shelf controllers did not exist when the book was written, but my strong recommendation is, skip the last part of the book and just go buy a simple animatronics controller. This is the 21st century, after all.

I don't want to leave this review on a negative note. This book is wonderful! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, I learned a ton, and nowhere else will you see this material written down. If you are a home haunter, or have a professional haunted house, or even if you put moving Christmas decorations on your lawn, you absolutely need this book. And READ it! Don't just let it sit on the shelf. You'll be glad you did.

I have not read the entire book yet, but have spent about two hours skimming through it in some detail. Overall, it covers everything very well, including basic theory (levers, etc). No need to fear if you are math challenged, as the formulas are not complex.

At more advanced levels, it also covers home-made circuits as an alternative to store bought items. Note that no circuit board patterns are included, so you will have to either make them yourself or breadboard the circuit (probably a much easier option for most people, and it allows you to vary component specifications to suit your needs).

Of particular note is that he includes several motion sensors, which are very desirable in terms of air/energy efficiency, as well as the shock effect for Halloween.

The only negative comment I have is that all formulae and units are in SAE (oz-ft, PSI, etc). If you are from the US or UK, you should have no problem, but for the other 180 countries in the world, you will have to either learn the old measurements, or convert them to SI/metric. I am suprised by this, as SI formulae are simpler (not as many constants and conversions), and even the the UK is rapidly moving towards SI/metric. I hope that any future reprints of this book will take this into account.

In summary, this book is an excellent ref for a homeowner or student with some tech ability, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in making an animated display. I suspect my copy will have much use over the years, and do not envision passing it to other people. ie/ The book is a keeper, not one that you wish to circulate.

DNP

This book had great ideas for some great displays, but be prepared to spend some time deciphering it. It's so involved that I decided to wait and attempt something before next Halloween.

This book was a great guidline for someone like myself who wants to utilize electrical engineering skills and gain knowledge of mechanical engineering principles. I designed a Animatronic coffin with an AC Motor linked with levers to open and close the lid while lifting the prop in snych with the coffin lid. Also added internal lighting controlled by Micro switches to turn on/off lights.

It was a great learning experience.


John

Hands down, this is the absolute best reference available on animatronics. I belong to a Haunters' forum & many of the members are very familiar with this book & it's the very first thing we recommend when someone new asks for a good book on animatronics.

I have not read the entire book yet, but have spent about two hours skimming through it in some detail. Overall, it covers everything very well, including basic theory (levers, etc). No need to fear if you are math challenged, as the formulas are not complex.

At more advanced levels, it also covers home-made circuits as an alternative to store bought items. Note that no circuit board patterns are included, so you will have to either do it yourself or breadboard the circuit (probably a much easier option for most people, and it allows you to vary component specifications to suit your needs)

Of particular note is that he includes several motion sensors, which are very desirable in terms of air/energy efficiency, as well as the shock effect for Halloween.

The only negative comment I have is that all formulae and units are in SAE (oz-ft, PSI, etc). If you are from the US or UK, you will have no problem, but for the other 180 countries in the world, you will have to either learn the old measurements, or convert them to SI/metric. I am suprised by this, as normally SI formulae are simpler (not as many constants and conversions), and even the the UK is rapidly moving towards SI/metric. I hope that any future reprints of this book will take this into account.

In the end, this book is an excellent ref for the average homeowner or student, and I recommend it to anyone interested in making an animated display. I suspect my copy will have much use over the years, and do not envision passing it to other people. ie/ The book is a keeper, not one that you wish to circulate.

DNP

I'm still reading this one because some of the concepts are a little advanced for me. Lots of info and great ideas. I would not recomend this one for beginners. Try some stuff with radio controlled cars first before attempting some of these projects.

First of all, if you are looking for specific plans (ie. diagrams, blueprints, supply list, detailed photos of finished prop) then you might be disappointed with this book.
The purpose of this book is to give you the basic knowledge (some math required) to create any mechanical prop that YOU envision. The author tells you how to make things move their arms, or jump up, or spin around, etc. Then, you decide what that thing should be made of (wood, metal or PVC), how big the thing should be, what the thing should do and what the thing should look like. The author also deals with both electric and pnuematic motors and types of sensors so you don't have to hide in the bushes and trigger your props.
My only complaint is that the author doesn't give you any hints on how to cover your mechanical skeleton. The author leaves the creative part totally up to you but a few basic pointers would have been helpful.

The author misrepresents the the subject matter as a tome for creating holiday displays; but in truth you will practically require a degree in engineering to cull any helpful information from this book. Not helpful for the home Haunter or Christmas decorator at all! I bought this book anticipating ideas for creating holiday displays and how to build them. Instead this is a book that (painfully) goes through in-depth technical prose on animatronic and electro-mechanical engineering theory. The data, while technical competent, is dry and almost purely technical and uninspiring for those seeking both creative ideas along with technical guidance or support. If you are a pro or semi-pro with your own haunted house attraction, this book could be very useful in creating and maintaining some animatronic effects. But if you are somebody who is just trying to create unique animated decorations for holiday displays, there is much more inspired and creative information available in other how-to books and the internet.

This book had everything I needed to get some animation into my displays! I highly recommend this book. Mr. Wise gives all the information you will need (math, physics, etc), but presents it in an easy to understand format. Be the talk of your neighborhood next Halloween