One of the rides I always look forward to at Disneyland is Astro Blasters. Toy Story had been one of my favorite movies ever since I was a child, and I always have so much fun trying to beat my last high score while trying to fight off the evil Emperor Zurg. One of the aspects of the ride that I was always intrigued by was the room in which we would pass by Buzz Lightyear. There he would stand, life-sized, moving, and speaking, and introducing the plan of attack to each of the riders. The Etch-a-sketch screen behind him detailing our plans was an element that really helped us get into the mood of the ride, as well as the lighting in the room that set the location as being inside a spaceship. But the thing that always made me so curious lighting wise, was the method in which Disneyland was able to use lighting in order to create Buzz's face. Every time I walked by and examined him, I would always think about it but could never figure it out. Was his face a projection? There seemed to be projectors on the ceiling. However his face and body would move--wouldn't that make such detailed and specific projection difficult? And if, after all, his face was created from a projection of light from elsewhere, would the face projection be moving along with however the animatronic body was moving? It seemed that his face itself was shaped as well, for example, his protruding nose and chin. So then I thought that with such a specific shape, that perhaps his face was a screen itself, like an LED screen of some sort. Just from looking at this picture, the lighting upon Buzz's face is so perfectly placed that it looks as though his face could truly be there. And yet, in the picture, the camera wasn't able to completely capture the details of his face, making it slightly blurry or hard to see. This seems, to my knowledge, to prove that his face really is made of light, either by screen or projection.
Though I have yet to figure out exactly how this is done, I am still always amazed by the magic of lighting. I will have to keep riding Astro Blasters many more times in order to try and examine and figure out exactly how Buzz comes to life!
-Diane Ho
P.S. I'm so sorry this blog post is so late at night! I've been dealing with internet outage and have finally been able to get in and post it! Hope that is alright!!
No problem on the time of the post, as long as I get them by Monday morning, it is fine
ReplyDeleteIf you are truly interested in how this is done, email me and I wil check with some friends who work there
Nice post and investigation of what lighting can do L)