Anthrobot Creative LLC is a design and consulting studio that specializes in character creation and animation development for robotic and digital media applications.
A Life Long Quest
Founder, Doug Griffith, spent 37 years at Walt Disney Imagineering seeking answers to the question, “What does it take to bring a machine to life?” During his Disney career, he animated hundreds of AUDIO-ANIMATRONICS figures and created numerous original characters, designed to perform in real and digital realms. He was the creative lead for several successful development projects and directed the character design and animation on numerous attractions; always searching for new tools and techniques to deliver a more authentic performance. In the academic year 2021-2022, he served as the director and an associate professor of the Animatronics graduate program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. This was the inaugural year of the first Animatronics graduate program in the country.
The Art is the Magic
Fortunate to have had the opportunity to design and animate with a wide range of technology throughout his career, Doug holds a strong conviction that the the real key to creating believable characters is a foundational understanding of the art itself. In a field that relies so heavily on technology, it is easy to forget that it is artistic expression that ultimately brings a character to life. Technology alone can’t produce true art, because true art is an expression of the human spirit. This belief is the driving force behind Anthrobot Creative; to help organizations and individuals that create dimensional characters better engage with the humanity of the audience through emotional connection. Appreciating the key roll that technology plays as the instrument through which the story and performance is delivered, our goal is to help both those crafting the technology and those creating the performance work as one; producing characters that will truly live in the imaginations of the audience. (Picture: The Wicked Witch of the West - The Great Movie Ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Closed in 2017)