Disney's Olaf is a festive favourite. The lovable, optimistic snowman from Frozen starred in his own holiday special back in 2017 and he's a popular choice for Christmas decorations.
Now the animated character crossed from the screen into the real world in an impressive feat of engineering. Disney has created a sophisticated self-roaming Olaf robot for Disney theme parks, and he looks amazing (see our character design tips for pointers on how to create an engaging character of your own).
Disney's shared videos showing how its 'imagineers' created the walking, talking autonomous Olaf. The robot has removable limbs, eyes and hair that attach magnetically and even a soft, animated snow-like texture.
Most impressive is that unlike traditional static animatronics, Olaf can walk, gesture and interact with people on the fly, like a real-world non-playable character from a video game.
This was made possible by using AI and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) guided by animation references to mimic the snowman's movements and expressions.
Olaf's autonomy reminds me of Westworld, but Disney fans are delighted. Some are already calling for more interactive characters, including the potentially dangerous Gary De'Snake from Zootopia 2.
But others are a little skeptical about whether they'll ever get to see Olaf for themselves. Parallels are already being made with Disney's ambitious Living Character Initiative.
First announced back in 2007, the plan was to populate Disney theme parks with free-roaming, interactive, mechanical characters. But a video posted on YouTube by Defunctland just three weeks ago and already watched over 3 million times details a sting of technical problems and issues with guest behaviour that led many characters to be used only briefly before being consigned to storage.
The video (above) has some interesting insights into how Disney chose the characters for its animatronics (and why it didn't do Mickey Mouse).
I'm not convinced that Disney is going to allow Olaf to wander freely around parks on his own considering how brittle he looks. The company hasn't said exactly how he'll be used, but I expect he will feature in more carefully curated interactions with visitors.
Inspired to animate your own characters? See our guides to the best animation software and the best laptops for animation.
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