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Looney Bird (Animatronic)

From Chuck E. Pedia
Source metadata
Type Animatronics
Start date 1980
Tags ShowBiz Pizza Place, Creative Engineering, Rock-afire Explosion
Contributors CECMentor, Stripes, BenTrainFan2000, Kathydra, TutorialTimeYt

The Looney Bird Animatronic (Also the Pizzacam Animatronic) was one of the main Classic Stage animatronics produced by Creative Engineering Inc. The animatronic would first be developed in April of 1980, before debuting at the Jacksonville, FL (9820 Atlantic Blvd) on August 14th of that year.

History

Looney Bird was first designed by Creative Engineering's main artist Dave Thomas at the request of Aaron Fechter.The character is an evolution of the Gooney Bird (Animatronic) from the Hard Luck Bears.In the original Concept art [1] Looney Bird has a significantly more disheveled appearance being almost completely bald with brown skin and a very thin black striped neck.He has a small amount of dirty yellow feathers around his face and sticking out of the top of his head.His beak is significantly longer with a yellow base and a large red blotch with hints of blue and tan at the tip,resembling the beak of a Toucan.He also resides inside a whiskey barrel.While these early elements do resemble the Gooney Bird (Animatronic) most of these features would get changed out in the final design.

The first Looney Bird animatronic debuted on august 14th 1981 at the Jacksonville, FL (9820 Atlantic Blvd) store.This version of Looney,known as the ,,Jacksonville Beta was mechanically identical to the standardized Gooney Bird (Animatronic) .Cosmetically he also shares the exact same mask as him,sculpted by David ,,Billy Bob Irvin in 1980.The bot had bright red fur with white feathers around his face and under his chin,tufts of green feathers on his cheeks and a long stem of green feathers sticking straight up out of the top of his head.The bot itself resides inside a blue oil barrel with painted decals on top of black spilling oil.On the front of the barrel there's a red circle decal that reads ,,EASY FLOW OIL with an illustration of a tilted barrel spilling black oil on top of the ,,OIL part of the decal.The original version of the decal was bright red with white text and the barrel represented by a simple undetailed white cylinder.Under the main decal was also a second decal with red text reading ,,ECONOMY SIZE [2] [3] Looney Bird would keep this design for approximately the first 2 batches of Rock-afire's produced with the only major change being a third tuft of green feathers being added on the middle of his forehead inbetween the tops of the white feathers sometime around the construction of either the programming stage [4] or around the construction of the 0002 or 0003 Rock-afire produced(We have no phots of Looney 0002,but 0003 installed at West Des Moines, IA (1431 22nd St) did have it [5]

In 1981 Looney Bird would get his mask resculpted,creating the ,,Widebeak mask,it's unknown who sculpted this mask but due to it's similarities to the last mask it's thought to have also been sculpted by David ,,Billy Bob Irvin.This mask would end up being used all the way up until the batch of January 1983 [6]. Along with the new mask Looney's feathers would be finalized,,with the stem of feathers on the top of his head being replaced with a plant growing out of a bulge on his head,he was also given purple ,,whiskers made out of some long and thin feathers.Mechanically his lift mechanism was made much wider to give more clearance for the head.The number of bolts on the side of his headframe to attach the fiberglass shell would also get changed,with only 1 being put on each side instead of 2 like beta Looney's [7] His barrel would also get updated becoming wider to accommodate the wider lift mech.The decals also got changed,with the main circle being given a white border,the text being made yellow and the barrel icon was also made yellow with orange details.The Economy size decal was completely removed,and the oil spilling decal near the top was also simplified.

Looney Bird animatronics would continue to be produced up until 1983. The January batch would be the last used inside ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants, and would be kept and stored for future openings, while Creative Engineering would continue to produce bots until June. Now with a surplus of bots, these would need to be sold to other family entertainment centers.In the batch of may 1983 a new mask was introduced for Looney Bird sculpted by Creative Engineering artist Nancy.This mask is still used to this day

During Concept Unification, Looney Bird would be retrofitted into the character Pizzacam a blue talking camera who popped up out of a giant amp for backing vocals and in certain showtapes acted as Mr. Announcer.The only mechanical changes initially were the lowering of air pressure for his movements from 80psi to 70psi [8],the replacement of the mouth cylinder clevis from a 1 to a 2 [9] and later diagnostic changes to the flow control speeds.Around the early 90's many stores would replace Looney's original universal joint and spring neck assembly with a rigid steal rod,due the lens nose of Pizzacam constantly causing the mech and spring to bend slightly downward.

In April of 2001 a major change would come for all 3-Stage bots in stores. Their previously latex masks would now be changed out for furred plastic ones, to reduce costs for the rapidly deteriorating latex. Around this time stores would also be offered the ability to purchase new eyes for their 3-Stage characters, now with smaller pupils and more detailed irises. Store owners were also encouraged to repaint the eyelids with Rust-Oleum Painters Touch spray paint. Several Pizzacams would either be removed on 3-Stages throughout the 2000s and 2010s, being destroyed or used for parts. 3 Pizzacams at the Huntsville, AL (1220 Jordan Lane) , Madison, TN (2070 Gallatin Pike) and Roanoke, VA (4059 Electric Rd) would have their cosmetics replaced with black plastic Retro-Cam' cosmetics in the mid-late 2010s.All 3 were later removed

Design

The Looney Bird Animatronic is a red bird head with a green plant growing out of a red bump on his head. His skin is usually a dark brown, and his beak is yellow. The feathers around his face are white, he has 4 long purple feathers on the sides of his head, and he has red feathers scattered around his face. He has 3 patches of Green fur, 2 of which are on the sides of his face, and one in front of his bump.

Mechanical Structure

The frame of Looney Bird's mech is mainly constructed out of aluminum square bars(hollow tube for the beta bots,solid for standard production) with various smaller steal parts,includig rods,clevises and mounts.His neck assembly is constructed out of a universal joint covered in a heavy duty rubber hose with a large spring on top.The character like almost every other Creative Engineering bot runs on pneumatic cylinders produced by the companies Cylinders & valves inc , Clippard Minimatic , and Tolomatic inc.These cylinders are than actuated with Mac valves

Movements

The bot has 7 movements in total. 6 on the animatronic's valves [10] and a hand movement on a separate set of valves. [11]

Movement Valve number Bit Grey Box Drawer
Mouth 1 17 Bottom
Left Eye Lid 2 41 Bottom
Right Eye Lid 3 42 Bottom
Eye Cross 4 43 Bottom
Head Turn Left 5 21 Bottom
Raise 6 22 Bottom
Prop Movement Valve number Bit Grey Box Drawer
Hands 6 48 Top

Additional source metadata

Field Value
manufacturer Creative Engineering

References

  1. ↑ showbizpizza.com
  2. ↑ dn710202.ca.archive.org
  3. ↑ showbizpizza.com
  4. ↑ youtube.com
  5. ↑ instagram.com
  6. ↑ youtube.com
  7. ↑ youtube.com
  8. ↑ archive.org
  9. ↑ archive.org
  10. ↑ archive.org
  11. ↑ showbizpizza.com

Import provenance

Imported from Cheese-E-Pedia at source revision 274f085c7132d784f81b7a4cbd96e7a0922db854. Source material is provided under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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