Joanna Sotomara, Puppet Boot Camp, helped bring Bot to life

It took thirteen puppeteers to bring AppleTV+’s eponymous robot ‘Sunny’ to life.

Joanna Sotomura, the American artist who embodies the ominously helpful bot, flew to Tokyo where the series was filmed to meet the robotics team two weeks before filming began. “We had our robot dojo room. I did the rehearsals and scenes as Joanna, and they put tape on my stomach for Sunny’s eye line, and I was given a helmet with a ring light. A monitor and camera recorded my facial expressions and projected them onto the robot in real time,” says Sotomura.

“Sunny” follows Rashida Jones as Suzie Sakamoto, an American housewife living in Kyoto. The buddy mystery pairs Suzie with the title character, an intelligent “homebot” named Sunny left to Suzie by her missing husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima).

Speak with Variety, Sotomura explained how she spent much of the two weeks “practicing the head and coordinating it with the arms and controlling the bot.” She added: “It took some trial and error, but by the end of the shoot we had a pretty well-oiled little Sunny-bot.”

WETA’s robotics engineer Craig Hobern and robotics supervisor Tyler Page worked on more than 100 prototype sketches and concept art ideas and worked with showrunner Katie Robbins to get Sunny’s look right.

“We talked about the idea of ​​Sunny being inspired by ideas about architecture, plants and ceramics,” Page explains. “We came up with the idea of ​​a very Japanese-inspired look, trying to imagine what it would be like in a home environment, and how that bot will work and serve.”

From an aesthetic point of view, Sunny’s technology would be hidden so that she looked sleek.

Page’s next challenge was working with the animatronics department to determine how the puppetry would work. “The problem we had to solve was making Sunny believable,” says Page.

In addition to Sotomura working on the head and face, Sunny needed a puppeteer to work on the arms and move the bot through space. “Craig was there making micro-adjustments to the animation,” Hobern says.

Hobern and Page spent three months in pre-production figuring out those logistics. A month of that, Hobern says, was a month of extensive training with all the puppeteers in “puppet boot camp.” Hobern says, “We spent time getting them to perform actions like picking up a pen. It looks simple when you see it on the screen, but it’s really a lot of work to get to that place where you feel how far you have to move your hand to touch something.”

The puppeteers spent time blocking and rehearsing while watching Sotomura spend as much time as possible observing her. “They observed and watched her, and when it came time to bring the puppet on set, it was done with Joanna’s dialogue, her head movements and the hands moving organically with her,” Hobern adds.

The six-month shoot also became a training ground with Sunny. “Every day they improved and learned new things and figured out a better way, and Joanna figured out how to change her equipment to make him more comfortable or more responsive to her. It was a constantly evolving process.”

“Sunny” is streaming on AppleTV+