A video has begun making the rounds and it's, well, going to disturb you a little bit, sorry. It's an animatronic baby designed by special effects guru Chris Clarke, to be used in an unnamed UK soap opera. While your immediate reaction might be to think that this is merely the first in an all-out assault from the uncanny valley, Clarke explains in the comments that there's something much less ominous at play here: you simply can't put an actual, premature baby under TV studio set lights for hours at a time. It's also not Clarke's first work on infants, as you can see at the 4:45 minute mark in the second video below. Clarke also did some of the special effects work for War Horse, enabling scenes that otherwise would have harmed an actual horse.
So the animatronics are creepy, but they're also preventing real humans and animals from suffering for our entertainment. Feel better now? Yeah, us neither.

There are 10 Comments. Add yours.
It’s okay, I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight anyway…
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 2:10 PM EST reply Recommend (6) Flag actions
Good lord, I might think twice about having a baby now.
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 2:22 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 2:49 PM EST reply Recommend (7) Flag actions
Hm, Demon Seed- “I’m alive” .
Well, at least he didn’t make the baby from Eraser Head- yeesh(shudder).
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 2:50 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Ahhhhh!
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 5:41 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Things being creepy and the uncanny valley have lost a lot of their meaning. Overused.
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 5:55 PM EST reply Recommend (1) Flag actions
Immediately reminded me of the Technologic baby
Also, Slitheen in the second video!
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 9:59 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
D’oh, missed your comment. Apologies. :P
Posted on Jan 23, 2012 | 12:19 AM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Oh SHI—
Posted on Jan 23, 2012 | 12:18 AM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
I started thinking about how they control the baby’s motion, and yeah, probably it’s just some sort of remote control or preprogrammed set of actions. But I’m going to choose to believe there’s a full grown man wriggling and cooing in front of a Kinect just off camera.
Posted on Jan 23, 2012 | 5:47 AM EST reply Recommend (1) Flag actions
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