Judith Rubin: You were on the team that built the gigantic, animatronic owl for
the Electric Daisy Carnival, a 3-day music festival held recently in Las
Vegas. This was a high-profile success and images of the owl have been
all over the media. Tell us about it.
Ron Griffin: We were approached by Gary Goddard’s entertainment and design
company, The Goddard Group, for Insomniac Events to build a
35-foot-tall, 80-foot-wingspan, animated owl for the event, which would
see an attendance of over 300,000 over three days.
The creativity of the owl concept and the plan for its use as a key
element in the festival were fantastic. The bad news: We would have only
six weeks to design (mechanically and electrically), build, test, ship,
and install him. We were cautious at first about taking this job – but
it was the kind of big challenge that we love to solve. Working with
Goddard and Insomniac, we were able to form a plan that we felt would
succeed even in the short timeframe allowed.
Six weeks! Our approach had to be simple, yet provide the desired
look and animation. It had to use components that we could get quickly
and that we knew would work.
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