Bringing a Bendy Inky Demon to Terrifying Life

Bendy and the Ink Machine and its sequels are survival horror games with a very distinct theme inspired by the Golden Age of American animation. The characters and enemies in the games adhere to that theme and the Ink Demon is easily the most memorable of the bunch. It is a hulking creature with skin that seems to be made of congealed wet ink, two goatlike legs, and a big ol’ set of chompers that are somehow creepier because they look like they belong to an herbivore. Doing what they do best, Jaimie and Jay of Wicked Makers brought an Ink Demon to life in the form of a terrifying animatronic.

Wicked Makers build lots of life-size animatronics, with a particular fondness for horror video game characters. They’ve added more and more skills to their repertoire over the years, with the most recent addition being welding. That let them fabricate a welded steel tube skeleton for this animatronic, which increases its size, durability, and weight-carrying capacity.

All that weight requires a lot of power to move around, so Wicked Makers turned to pneumatic pistons for actuation. They initially underestimated the size of the pistons necessary for the job, but were able to upgrade those to more suitable models. To control the movement, they just need to open and close the pneumatic valves going to those pistons.

As with previous projects, BeardlessProps helped with the head design. That is a huge 3D model that Wicked Makers was able to chop up into sections small enough to 3D-print on a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon.

Finally, to give the Ink Demon its signature wet inky skin, Wicked Makers got creative. They experimented with different options and ultimately settled on a brush-on silicone mixture dyed a very deep black. Even when dry, that is so glossy that it looks wet. They put on thick coats over a structure of aluminum foil, giving the silicone a lot texture and resulting in a gloopy dripping appearance.

This was a resounding success and the Ink Demon animatronic looks amazing. Even standing still, it looks like something conjured by a video game designer to be as horrific as possible. Then once it starts moving under the power of compressed air, the effect is even more pronounced.

Wicked Makers have created a lot of awesome animatronics, but this may just be their best work yet.