Q: Why was Geoff constructed with only one movable arm, a rotating neck and moving jaw? Was that resource issue, or a comic decision?

A: Geoff Peterson is a plastic anatomic skeleton with a moving jaw, a rotating head, a metal mohawk and one arm that moves up and down. Originally, the idea was to have this character that would interact with Craig. It would work on remote control, where you push a button and it answers automatically. And from my perspective, having worked on a lot of different puppets (R2-D2, the Energizer Bunny, etc.) from movies or TV is that it requires a fairly skilled puppeteer to pull off more than one or two moves. For example to drive R2-D2 only requires one operator under most circumstances. I know there are people out there who are R2-D2 builder enthusiasts and they want to build everything into their R2. They spend a lot of time trying to cram fire extinguisher, light saber launcher and all those different things into this one little shell. But the truth with the movies is that we swap out different robots or devices as the situation requires. So when you're actually driving R2 for public appearance, you only need one person to control it. In contast, the Energizer Bunny requires three people to operate. One person works the head, a second person runs the arms and the third person is the driver. Particularly with driving, controlling a robot really requires concentration, especially when you have people around you or when you're driving close to an edge, such as with the Energizer Bunny driving on a countertop. As far as Geoff Peterson goes, the jaw is the thing that you as the operator have to concentrate on the most. And turning/moving the head and moving the arm, that's just icing on the cake. But your main job is flapping the jaw. With two arms, it becomes this whole thing where you gave to figure out what to do with the other arm. And then people ask why can't you make him drive away from the podium. I like to say that's for the protection of humanity. To make sure that I don't accidentaly create skynet. But really it's mostly about puppeteer and the ability to control Geoff in a meaningful way. Secondly, it worked out because it's actually a fairly small skeleton, but there is enough space to fit the servo for one shoulder and the neck in that chest cavity with direct drive, so you don't have to do any fancy gearing, belts or chains. So it all worked out in the end. The servos that you'd have to use to move this full sized human skeleton around are fairly beefy. They are Tonegawa SSPS-105s, in fact. The Cadillac of large scale servos. That's what Geoff uses. They are big and they have to fit inside of his little chest coat area so that he looks reasonably human scale, and not like this sort of hunched over giant hulky robot skeleton sidekick.