What do you do when you need to put a modern face to a venerable corporate logo that has been established for over 60 years? You call The Character Shop, have us create a charming, talking, dancing, mischevious animatronic character and watch your market share grow by 7 percent! Venezuela's Empresas Polar recently upgraded their advertising campaign to bring their well-known Polar Bear symbol to life. After reviewing all the top animatronic companies, Polar settled on The Character Shop, chiefly because of our strengths in realistic animal duplication, our bold, instantly recognizable and lovable characters, and our amazing Waldo® system, which allows those characters to lip-synch, sing, and shout, and deliver an amazing range of expression. To date, we've shot 18 spots with Pedroso for Polar. The Venezuelan people love Pedroso! He comes across as sweet, playful, and mischievous; a great buddy for guys and a huggable hunk for the ladies. Pedroso is a technological marvel; it's an animatronically enhanced suit, with battery and video systems onboard, and a Waldo® system controlling his many movements and expressions. Anactor dons a spandex underbody suit. on top of that goes a padded harness, which contains the necessary batteries, servos, and electronics. It also has a set of "muscle forms" on top of it that change the actors' anatomy to more closely resemble a polar bears'. Next, a custom woven yak and synthetic fur "skin" is attached, and atop this, the animatronic head. Pedroso is much taller than his human counterparts, and the additional height is provided by raising Pedrosos's head up above the suit wearer: A sophisticated support, linkage and actuator system holds the polar bear head up, and allows it to turn, nod, and tilt. Here's a 5 minute progress movie... The head itself is incredibly expressive, with dual axis ears, eyes up/down. eyes side/side, and blinks, 4-axis eyebrows, nose up/down, nose wiggle, 2 axis jaw, smile, and 4 axis lip movement. This enables Pedroso to smile, frown, act shocked, surprised, perturbed, concerned, and have many other expressive capabilties. Here are some links to other information about Pedroso: http://www.empresas-polar.com/cervezapolar/cerveza_pedroso_es.html
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