DIY PIXAR's AUTO

by SHIFT!

26K7523

Intro: DIY PIXAR's AUTO

Even though it's fairly unlikely I will be posting a step by step Instructable on him I figured, what with National Robot Week, I could still share a couple of photos of one of my earliest PIXAR builds the villainous Autopilot from WALL·E.  

Back in the spring of 2009, when I was the Public Representative of the wall-ebuilders.com group, we were getting ready for our very first Maker Faire event and I needed something really cool to show off who we were.  While I was a bit pressed for time to build a WALL-E, I was very influenced by a video I saw of another WALL-E builder on youtube who painted a captain's wheel to look like film's villain and was inspired to build my own (with the added modifications of course).

Basically he's a modified wooden ship's helm I purchased at Michael's craft store which I repainted and sanded down for movie accuracy.  His eye is the glass and metal frame from a clock and behind it I set a super bright red LED (inspired by this 'ible).  Additionally all five of his... ship "pegs" can be fully extended to a length of 2" and he's fully equipped with a grabber claw and faux tazer (like the film's).  But perhaps the coolest function is that I also built into him a remote control speaker which I use to control his voice from a MacinTalk enabled computer, giving him that awesome dark monotone voice from the film.

He's been a staple of my booth at both the Maker Faire 2009 and 2010 and here's hoping we get to show off our new creations at Maker Faire 2011!

-M.E.


 
 

20 Comments

Win Guy 13 years ago

AWESOME! I've been looking for something like this for YEARS! 5/5
Win Guy

SHIFT! 13 years ago

Well, I'm glad to have helped out then Win Guy! Auto is one of my all time favorite PIXAR characters and he was a ton of fun to create!

Dumchicken 12 years ago

captain meet me on the bridge

hero 54123 13 years ago

looks like Gla-d0s from portal

GenAap 12 years ago

I was just thinking the same thing... sort of acts like Gla-d0s too. or is it more skynet-ish

SHIFT! 13 years ago

LOL, yeah it does kinda! I think the main point was that Auto was supposed to be an homage to Hal 9000 who also sort of shares the same look as GLaDOS, according to TV Tropes' entry Cyber Cyclops.

hero 54123 13 years ago

you need to make a portal gun next with a lcd lens screen and a blue light to make a projector when you press a button on it, so it looks like a portal......

splazem 12 years ago

Awesome! 5-Stars.

figgalicous 13 years ago

Fantastic work, congratulations.

jamiec53 13 years ago

The whole point of a photo 'ible is to show off something that you've made, not necessarily to tell us how to make it.

SHIFT! 13 years ago

Good News everyone! DIY PIXAR just got re-accepted into the Maker Faire 2011! Hope to see everyone there for awesome home built fun!

SHIFT! 13 years ago

...Did I ever say it was one? Also, I'm pretty sure pretty much anything posted on this site is considered an "instructable", there's just varying categories for type.

Jedrokivich 13 years ago

Nice! You should do a 343 Guilty Spark!

dhymers 13 years ago

Make some characters from Portal !!! :D

Technologic 13 years ago

The same thing came to mind for me too. It is very Portal-sy. Changing the dark voice to a crazy super-sarcastic robotic female voice would be cool.
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That is an awesome piece of work! Now all you need to do is to make a full instructable :D

Kiteman 13 years ago

Oh, this is superb!

You have got to post a step-by-step of this!

SHIFT! 13 years ago

Thanks for your kind response Kiteman! But I unfortunately even if I wanted to post a step-by-step instructable about this I probably wouldn't be able to, although I can still answer any questions you have about him!