When I went to Disneyland last year and sat in a room where Walt Disney himself stood up and spoke, I was blown away by what Walt Disney Imagineering had made real. And yet, less than a year later, I have seen something that leaves that in the dust. I have met WDI’s robot Olaf, and he is absolutely incredible.
Ahead of his appearance on the stage at NVIDIA GTC today, I got a special preview of the robot Olaf that will make his official debut when the new World of Frozen opens at Disneyland Paris later this month. I also got to speak with Kyle Laughlin & Mortiz Bächer, two members of the Imagineering team who developed the free-roaming robot, who have made something that truly looks like Frozen’s favorite snowman has stepped off the movie screen.
Disney's New Olaf Robot Got Its Personality From Josh Gad
Disney Parks have been working on robots for a few years, but Olaf is a new milestone in the technology as he'll be the first to be available to the general public in Disney Parks.
Part of the work that was required to do that included going back to the source. That meant both working with Olaf’s lead animator and Olaf’s voice actor Josh Gad, in order to learn how Olaf first came to life as an animated figure, and to give him the right personality. Imagineering’s Kyle Laughlin told me…
And these systems … give us the opportunity, then to work with world-class talent, the animator who animated Olaf in the film, we work very closely with, so that we can take his intent and develop it so that it maps its way onto Olaf, the robot and Josh Gad, from a voice talent perspective to work with him, to give our robot the personality that everybody knows and loves.
Working with creative people behind characters in order to bring them into the Disney Parks is standard practice. The same things happen when animated characters become live-action characters in the parks. This is traditionally a long-running process that involves multiple conversations as elements of a character are constantly tweaked in order to get it right.
Oalf's Movements Came Directly From The Movie
But when it came to Olaf going from animated character to robot, much less of this was needed. Because in a true leap forward, the same assets used to create Olaf’s movements in the Frozen movies could be used directly to create Olaf’s movements as a robot. Laughlin continued…
In the past, when we had to animate that, it would be a back-and-forth. You'd have someone come and say, ‘Does that look like how you intended the animation to look like?’ And then we would tweak that in real-time, but it was as much of a back-and-forth. Now, as the company, we can use the same asset, the animated, rigged figure from the film, to be able to understand the intent and bring it into simulation. You don’t have to ask that question anymore because it’s the pure animation that came from the animator.
There's something to be said for what Disney calls its flywheel, the way that the different elements of the company can influence and assist each other. Imagineering's ability to go to the source animation meant there was nothing lost in translation.
Olaf Looks Incredible In Person
A few moments after this conversation Olaf walked into the room I was in, and I saw exactly what the Imagineers had been talking about. Olaf walked in with a smile on his face and said hello to me. It was honestly shocking just how “real” it felt. He certainly looked exactly like what you would think Olaf would look like if you were to meet him in reality. And with the voice of Josh Gad, he sounded exactly like him, but it was the way he moved that truly made him feel alive.
The Olaf robot will make its official debut later this month at Disneyland Paris and will also appear at the World of Frozen at Disneyland Hong Kong. I asked about a potential visit from the snowman at Epcot’s Norway pavilion, and while nothing was confirmed, it’s clear that there are a lot of plans for the future. Not only for Olaf specifically, but for this technology going forward.
