Oakley is a tree who dreams of flying. Polly is the bulldog puppy who wanders into his world and changes how he sees things. Between them they are the heart of The Tree That Wanted to Fly, and I have spent a big chunk of this year with my hands in foam, silicone, wire and, eventually, servo cables, bringing them to life.
The Tree That Wanted to Fly is a show created by Mia Borthwick.
I wanted to share how they came together, the bits that went wrong, and how Oakley ended up as an animatronic tree. If you saw the show, this is what was going on behind the bark.
Building Oakley
Oakley started life as a roll of chicken wire. I shaped the trunk and branches with it first, because chicken wire is so forgiving: you can push it, pinch it and bend it until the silhouette feels right, and if it doesn’t, you just squash it and try again. Once I was happy with the shape, I sprayed filler foam onto the outside of the chicken wire to bulk him out and give him some real roundness, keeping him hollow so I still had access to the inside of the tree. Once the filler foam had cured, I carved it with a knife to shape him.
For the bark I went old school: PVA with layers of newspaper and cardboard. I built it up layer by layer, tearing the paper and card rather than cutting it, so the edges stayed rough and gnarly like a real old tree. It is a slow, messy job, but there is something really satisfying about watching a lumpy shape slowly turn into something with character.
Oakley has two faces: a sad face on one side and a happy face on the other. His faces are made from upholstery foam, about 15mm thick. I cut out a face pattern, two curved sides with a gap for the mouth, and glued the seam together so it formed a rounded face shape. I then used foam to add features. The skin texture was the part I enjoyed most, and it took a lot of patience. I mixed clear silicone sealant with acrylic paint and spread it on with a knife. The catch is that you cannot mix much at once, because it cures off too quickly once the acrylic goes in. So it was small batch after small batch, mix, spread, mix again. The good news is that the silicone and acrylic mix sticks really well to itself, so I could keep adding layers on top of layers and dragging the knife through it to build up wrinkles and texture.
If you want to try this yourself, my advice is to mix less than you think you need and work quickly. It is much better to make ten small batches than to lose one big one halfway through spreading it.
His foliage is made from lots of different wool. I made pompoms of various colours and thicknesses of wool, with some longer pieces that I sewed together down the center.
Building Polly
Polly is the bulldog puppy. I started her with a bamboo skeleton with fabric joints, I then covered this in short fur fabric to build the body,which felt like a sensible plan: bamboo is light, strong and easy to cut. And the fabric would give it the dog shape and allow it to move. But I just could not get that chubby bulldog puppy look from it. She looked far too lean, more greyhound than bulldog.
So I changed tack and built the body and leg shapes out of foam. The torso foam fitted over a length of dowel, and the bamboo leg skeletons were attached to it with wire so they could move. That gave her the round, squishy shape she needed, and suddenly she started to look like a puppy rather than a frame.
Bulldog puppies are all about the loose skin rolls, and the answer turned out to be two long-sleeve white toddler t-shirts. Stretched, gathered and layered over the foam, they made lovely soft folds that move as she does. I love it when an everyday object solves a problem better than anything I could have bought specially, and those t-shirts are a perfect example.
For her face I used the same silicone and acrylic mix as Oakley, so the two of them feel like they belong in the same world. Using the same technique on both was important to me. They are such different characters, a big old tree and a little puppy, but they needed to look like they came out of the same story.
Barnstaple, and a broken jaw
The first shows of The Tree That Wanted to Fly were at Barnstaple Fringe TheatreFest in June. Back then, Oakley’s mouths were worked by a Bowden cable attached to a drum pedal. With two faces to work, that cable had a lot to do, and it was hard work. It was quite finicky to set up, and after the first show it broke.
That is the sort of thing that makes your stomach drop, but the show went on, and I am so pleased to say it was still a hit.
“With beautifully expressive and evocative puppets hand made by Mhairi Anderson, Mia brings this tale to life through song.”
Looking back, the pedal taught me a lot. A long cable running through a puppet has to bend round corners, and every bend adds friction and strain. It worked, but it was always going to be fragile, and I knew Oakley needed something he could rely on show after show.
Making Oakley animatronic
Once we were back in Weston-super-Mare, Oakley had some well earned time to relax while I started researching how to make him more reliable. I decided to do away with the long Bowden cable and the pedal altogether and turn him into an animatronic tree.
My starting point was Will Cogley’s animatronic mouth. He also has a great YouTube channel full of animatronics builds. His mouth was brilliant to work with and gave me a really good understanding of how these mechanisms work. I did not need all the extra parts, like the tongue and the cheek movement (maybe in the future!), so I took those off and was left with just the two jaw servos.
I had so much fun doing that, I thought I should swap his eyes out too, for eyes and eyelids that move. This was a lot more complicated. I found several designs on Thingiverse and Thangs, but none of them quite fitted. In the end I found a design for a single eye and eyelid by Hendrikx using two servos, and mirrored it for the other eye. I used Tinkercad to adjust the STL files so everything would fit inside Oakley’s head, and 3D printed the parts in ASA.
Fitting mechanisms into a head that was never designed for them is a puzzle. Every millimetre counts, and I went through several versions of the eye parts in Tinkercad before they sat where I wanted them.
To let the servos move freely, I had to cut Oakley’s faces away from the tree and add a fabric flap on the inside, so the eyelids and face can move when Oakley blinks. I then added some more foam strips onto Oakley to break up the gaps I’d needed to add, so they blend back into the bark.
Two faces, and a lot of tuning
Both of Oakley’s faces, the happy one and the sad one, now have two jaw servos, two eyes that look left and right, and two eyelids. That is a lot of little motors in one tree.
Behind the scenes he runs on an ESP32 with a PCA9685 servo driver, which lets one small board control all of those servos. I can work him with an Xbox controller, and I also built a wireless touchscreen control panel that talks to him over ESP-NOW, so there are no cables trailing across the stage.
Getting the eyelids right took a lot of tuning. Each lid needs its own open and closed positions, and if you push a servo too far it strains and buzzes. For a while one of the eyelids was lagging behind the others, and I was convinced it was something in the code. In the end it was mechanical: the face was dragging as the lid moved. Cutting the faces free with the fabric flap, and fitting a new servo, sorted it, and now the lids move much more smoothly. It was a good reminder that when something moves badly, it is worth checking the physical side before blaming the electronics.
My favourite bit is his idle mode. When nobody is working him, his eyes slowly drift from side to side, pausing now and then as if he has spotted something, and he blinks every so often. I slowed the blinks down and spaced them out, because quick, regular blinking looked robotic. Now he looks like he is quietly thinking to himself, which feels very Oakley.
What I’ve learned
If I had to sum up this project, it would be: be ready to change your plan. The bamboo skeleton did not give me the puppy I wanted, so foam and toddler t-shirts did. The pedal did not survive, so Oakley became animatronic. None of the eye designs fitted, so I mirrored one and reshaped it. Each time something went wrong, the puppets ended up better for it.
Where Oakley and Polly have been, and where they’re going
Oakley and Polly made their first appearance at Barnstaple Fringe TheatreFest in June. This October half term, they were back at Front Room Theatre in Weston-super-Mare, with shows on Wednesday 28 October at 2pm, Thursday 29 October at 11am and 2pm. On Friday afternoon they headed over to For All Healthy Living Centre, also in Weston-super-Mare, for a 2pm show. Next up, they are off to Ilfracombe for a show in the Pavilion at The Landmark on Sunday 15 November 2026 at 2pm. Tickets are from £5, and you can book tickets online!
Thank you to everyone who came to see the show, and if you have any questions about how they were made, just get in touch.