Robert “Bob” Kinoshita (24th February 1914 – 9th December 2014) was an artist, art director, and designer who worked in the film and TV industries from the 1950s through the early 1980s.
He is best known as the designer of three of the most famous robots in sci-fi: Tobor, from the 1954 film Tobor the Great, Robby the Robot, from the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, and the B9 Environmental Control Robot from Irwin Allen’s 1960s TV series Lost in Space, who he called “Blinky”. He also designed the show’s spaceship, the Jupiter 2.
After World War Two, he was one of just a handful of Asian American designers working on science fiction films, and had to overcome prejudice to break into the business.
In a 2004 interview with The Rafu Shimpo, partly featured here, explained how his designs for Robby the Robot were selected out of hundreds for Forbidden Planet. Robby plays a crucial role in the film, based loosely on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but filmmakers at MGM struggled with his final design.
“Finally, I thought, ‘what the hell’,” he recalled.” “‘We’re wasting so much time designing and drawing one sketch after another. I said to myself, I’m going to make a model’. So I started making a miniature. It was about 10 inches high,” Kinoshita said.
“Then one day, the art director sees the model. He says, ‘Give me that thing.’ He grabbed it and ran. I mean he literally ran over to the producer’s office because they were behind schedule. Ten minutes later, he comes running back and puts the model back on my desk and says, ‘Draw it!’ That’s how Robby the Robot was born.”
Creating a realistic robot for an ongoing TV series such as Lost in Space was not without its challeneges.
“Movement is the hardest thing to accomplish,” he recalled in a 1998 interview for ICONS. “How to move this thing. The guys who were manipulating were part of the special effects department, and they figured out a way to make it turn a corner quickly… and they had this cable system where it would go to a certain point, then they would hit this ‘release’ and then the Robot would pull another way. Almost a u-turn. Also, the Robot could walk or motivate himself with the treads. Because each leg was independent. A lot of directors didn’t know what to do with the Robot on set. How to use it. And then there were others who knew exactly how to use it very well.”
By the time Kinoshita retired, he had more than 1200 television and motion picture credits. Kinoshita’s robotic creations also appeared in The Twilight Zone, Columbo, The Addams Family, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Gale Storm Show, The Love Boat, Mork and Mindy and Gremlins, among others.
• Robert Kinoshita: The Rafu Shimpo Obituary
• The B9 Robot Builders Club: Build your very own full size replica of the
Lost in Space Robot B9
• A 1998 interview with Robert Konshita about his work on “Blinky” the Lost in Space robot
• Pan-Asian Metropolis — Robert Kinoshita & His Remarkable Robots, by Eric Brightwell
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Features, Film, Other Worlds, Television
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