Here's a short gif showing our first attempt at programming movements into the An1mal animatronic puppet.

It's super exciting seeing all the body parts moving at the same time, and a really interesting challenge to make believable movements using programming - it's a strange process, half puppetry and half animation.

Some behaviour states will have pre-programmed movements like this one, and others will use a mix of face-tracking and randomised movements to stop the interaction from becoming overly repetitive.

The mega talented Suzie Ferguson came over earlier in the week and created some weird and wonderful sounds for the an1mal, which add a completely new dimension. It's really exciting seeing the different elements come together and merge into one single performance.

The puppet itself is nearly done now, and we're making good headway programming these behaviours. Next week we will work on hooking up the sensors which trigger the behaviours, and integrating the animatronic and sensors into the enclosure which it will be exhibited in. This will give us our first real impression of the audience experience, so most likely there will be a fair bit of tweaking to do after that.