John Nolan creates a giant animated robot head to promote new maker space
- Date
- 22 January 2015
- Words
- Rob Alderson
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John Nolan may have the coolest job title on earth, described as he is as “a designer and creator of robots.” An animatronics expert who’s worked on a whole heap of blockbusters (from Harry Potter and Hellboy to Where The Wild Things Are and Clash Of The Titans), John was the go-to guy when Poke and directorial team The Theory wanted to do something pretty special to promote Here East, a new maker space on the site of the Olympic Park in east London.
John created an eight-foot-high robot with a fully animated head to deliver “a chest-beating rallying call to makers and creatives everywhere.” The head took 12 weeks to develop and build, and includes 30 servo motors to give it as wide a range of facial expressions as possible. It took a 30-foot crane and a six tonne truck to get it into place on site for filming but all that effort was certainly worth it – the final piece includes no CGI and encapsulates the creative ambition Here East hopes will come to define it.
John Nolan/Poke/The Theory: The Here East Vision
John Nolan/Poke/The Theory: The Here East Vision
John Nolan/Poke/The Theory: The Here East Vision
John Nolan/Poke/The Theory: The Here East Vision
John Nolan/Poke/The Theory: The Here East Vision
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About the Author
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Rob Alderson is a freelance writer, editor and strategist. He was previously editor-in-chief of It’s Nice That and WePresent, and editor of Design Week. He publishes the newsletter Undo, which tries to make sense of how AI is changing design work, the design process and the design industry.