Sifting through the infosphere as I drafted Monday’s Slog AM, I was delighted to stumble on an Instagram post introducing Grimothy aka “Jim Reaper, Dark Lord and Father of Jimothy,” as his creators call him. Could this monstrosity have sown Seattle’s favorite short-spined raccoon whose likeness has been co-opted by sports teams, artisanal cutting boards, and the ugliest t-shirts known to man?
Grimothy, the broader-than-human-sized raccoon, is an animatronic Halloween installation. He is ghastly, but also beautiful. His red eyes glow, his bony arms flail—as if grasping toward Ballard, the hellscape his son has run off to—and his mouth of spiky teeth chomp towards cars and pedestrians in a quiet corner of Bainbridge Island.
This DIY freakshow (sorry, Grimothy) is the brainchild of brothers Matt and Bryce Inman. You may recognize Matt’s flair on Grimothy’s, um, essence. Matt is the cartoonist behind the card game Exploding Kittens and the webcomic The Oatmeal. Grimothy, while surely a haunted demon, bears a striking resemblance to Matt’s cute, but depraved style. Grimothy is currently living and snarling along Bryce’s sidewalk across from Cherry Avenue across from the Wing Point Golf & Country Club.
I had to know more. How did they put this together? Are they ready for a million visitors?
Inman told me in an email that he and his brother, Bryce, welded, wired, and “servoed” this monstrosity to something resembling life. I’ve reconstituted his responses, from him and his brother, below.
Is your brother ready for some foot traffic?
Matt: Last night (Saturday) at around 9:30 p.m., there was still a line of cars outside the house. We realized we’d turned the front yard into an all-hours tourist attraction.
What was the toughest part about building this?
Bryce: Getting the main ring structure welded together was tough because some steel rods are small and anything more than a tiny spot weld burns through and cuts the piece in half. So, if I made one small mistake Jimothy would implode on top of me. Also, the rag I used to clean the welder kept catching fire because of all the flying sparks, and Grimothy’s fur is super flammable. So generally speaking implosions and explosions were the hardest part.
Matt: Learning to work with servos—they are like little motors that make things move. Since my electrical skills are non-existent, Grimothy’s interior is a total hack job of bad wiring and electrical tape. Every few hours Grimothy has the robot equivalent of a stroke and half his face stops working. I then have to crawl inside him through a flap near the butt and jiggle a bunch of cables. It’s like an animatronic colonoscopy.
Matt, what are you up to these days?
Matt: I directed my first short film, which debuted at film festivals across the country this year. It’s called My Dog: The Paradox, and it won Best Animated Comedy at the Portland Festival of Cinema and Animation. Other than that, I’m writing an all-ages science book that covers topics like neuroscience, black holes, wombat butts, and the mantis shrimp.
But mostly I’ve been spending time with my brother crawling in and out of a massive raccoon ass.
