ChristmasPud
TS Member
Just by coincidence I recently interviewed the engineer that built most of Tusssauds' animatronic figures for a video feature and the bookworm was his last project.
Tussauds always built their animatronics to be very durable with maintenance in mind (easy to replace the standard wearing components). He said at the time the bookworm was intended to last "forever" with routine maintenance.
The mech is the expensive part that has to be durable. The skin is the wearing part, designed to be replaced whenever needed. This doesnt necessarily mean the maintenance actually happens unfortunately!
Obviously Shawn doesnt have the moulds to make the bookworm's new skin, probably AT don't have them anymore either, so that's a challenge, but the mechanism is the key part. From what I saw in the video the important parts all looked in good condition.
There are lots of animatronic fans about who rescue old figures and get them to work again. I'd not heard of anyone deliberately removing the mechanism from an animatronic before. There was always the chance it would change hands in years to come and someone else able to restore it, if Shawn didn't want/have the means to restore it himself?
I also rescued an animatronic from a British park that was being thrown away. I found out how it worked, built a simple control system and despite not being used for about 20 years it worked really well!
Tussauds always built their animatronics to be very durable with maintenance in mind (easy to replace the standard wearing components). He said at the time the bookworm was intended to last "forever" with routine maintenance.
The mech is the expensive part that has to be durable. The skin is the wearing part, designed to be replaced whenever needed. This doesnt necessarily mean the maintenance actually happens unfortunately!
Obviously Shawn doesnt have the moulds to make the bookworm's new skin, probably AT don't have them anymore either, so that's a challenge, but the mechanism is the key part. From what I saw in the video the important parts all looked in good condition.
There are lots of animatronic fans about who rescue old figures and get them to work again. I'd not heard of anyone deliberately removing the mechanism from an animatronic before. There was always the chance it would change hands in years to come and someone else able to restore it, if Shawn didn't want/have the means to restore it himself?
I also rescued an animatronic from a British park that was being thrown away. I found out how it worked, built a simple control system and despite not being used for about 20 years it worked really well!
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