Animatronic Beginnings and Comeback

At a certain time before the late 90’s, practical effects were used frequently in film production, but as soon as Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) was introduced into the media, it forever changed how special effects were incorporated. As CGI allowed for more creative freedom in designing landscapes or characters,  there has been a steady decline in the use of practical effects, such as puppets, stop-motion, and animatronics.

Animatronics on one hand weren’t established until the 17^th century in Pre-Industrial Revolution France. The first animatronics were made as miniature characters built within an advanced clock. When every hour struck, the characters would be animated by gears connected to time-keeping devices (as said in the Stan Winston School of Character Arts webpage).

 Modern animatronics weren't established until 1961 by Walt Disney when developing animated characters as entertainment for his films and theme parks. An animatronic of President Abraham Lincoln was accounted as the first functional human audio-animatronic developed for his theme park. 

Ironically, the Disney company would later return to using practical effects when obtaining the Star Wars licence from Lucasfilms. Videos on their YouTube channel go in further depth of how their fictional characters and creatures were animated using advanced remote-controlled skeletal framed technology to make their creations look as believable as possible, as shown in this video starting from 2;10 to 4;03, Thankfully there is still an appreciation and advancement in practical animatronics used to this day.