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We created an incredibly realistic bloodhound replica for "Sweet Home Alabama" , starring Reese Witherspoon,
currently in release. Have you seen our Apple
iMac ad? The iMac in the store window that mimics a passerby was
a rod and animatronic puppet, built by The Character Shop! We recently wrapped
a 3 month long shoot on New Line's remake of "Willard" , starring
Crispin Glover. We created hundreds of realistic rat replicas for the film,
including sophisticated animatronic versions of the hero rats Ben and Socrates,
as well as other creature effects. Currently showing on TV are spots we've
done for Mohawk Carpets, Jack in the Box , and a whole slew
of new ads for Foster Farms, featuring the inimitable Imposter
Chickens Tom and Bob! For independent film Producer/Director Regis Trigano, we created
an authentic-looking tortoise for his filmed adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's
"Terrapin". We also did
this Bud spot featuring a thirsty pair of tortoises
! We created the animatronic "psychedelic toad" for the Barry
Sonnenfeld-directed Tim Allen-starrer "Big Trouble".
A Rooster for California Cheese that wakes up
a couple of cows a little too early! A cute Puppy toy gets mean for Duracell,
New Foster Farms spots with our new Turkey Character,
Flopping trout for "Dr. Dolittle II", a scratching Dalmation
paw for McDonalds, and a hellaciously cool 12' long
robotic arm for
Ford Focus , and, of course, the ubiquitous Talking
Sandwich Spots for Florida Citrus. Delightfully creepy Jack Balls for Jack in the Box
, at Christmastime...You can see some of our most recent work on
an MTV-airing campaign for Sony Walkman. Yep, that little
blue alien that all the coeds are diggin' is Plato, an animatronic
Bunraku TCS special! We created some Pied Crows for a Jeep
ad, and an animatronic dog and ostrich for Fox's upcoming theatrical
release "Dude, Where's My Car?" Another "Best Spot" vote by Adweek
for our Oxygen.com SuperBowl Spot! Check out the publicity!
A few more articles posted up
at that link, and a whole new slew of commercial spots for some
major clients. See if you recognize any of these ads: Oxygen.com
"I Am Baby"; featuring
a fully articulated 12 axis-of-freedom silicone-skinned animatronic
arm. Also debuting on SuperBowl Sunday were our Discovery Cove
Dolphin puppets that required 4 scuba-equipped puppeteers and modifying
a '64 Ford Galaxy to be filled with water. A bizarre Trippy the
Guniea Pig for Perdue Chicken, a talking PiggyBank for
CoolSavings.com , A new Foster Farms ad package
featuring our creation of a brand new character! Al Franken butters up our Talking
Potato for Parkay, and a worried dad-to-be rushes home to
find our Newborn Puppies for a Honda spot, Ericsson
Cellular Phone hired us to create a motley trio of Aliens
for an international spot that's getting a lot of attention. Maybe
you saw our Blockbuster ad last Halloween that featured a
cute couple of bats! (click here to downlad
a3.4 mb MPEG version!) We also
created a cute Lion named Kingsley for a kid's video series. Good
Day LA visited TCS for the third time recently!
Delightfully creepy Jack Balls for Jack in the Box
, at Christmastime...You can see some of our most recent work on
an MTV-airing campaign for Sony Walkman. Yep, that little
blue alien that all the coeds are diggin' is Plato, an animatronic
Bunraku TCS special! We created some Pied Crows for a Jeep
ad, and an animatronic dog and ostrich for Fox's upcoming theatrical
release "Dude, Where's My Car?". How did our Y2K start? With a
"Best Spot" vote by Adweek for our Oxygen.com SuperBowl
ad! It also placed in the top ten on the USA Today
Reader's Poll!
Check out the publicity! We've been busy creating
a whole new slew of commercial spots
for some major clients. See if you recognize any of these ads;
right now, on any given day, there are at least 12 commercials playing
that feature our work! Oxygen.com "I Am Baby"; a
fully articulated 12 axis-of-freedom silicone-skinned animatronic
arm. Also debuting on SuperBowl Sunday were our Discovery
Cove Dolphin puppets that required 4 scuba-equipped puppeteers
and modifying a '64 Ford Galaxy to be filled with water. A bizarre
Trippy the Guniea Pig for Perdue Chicken, a talking PiggyBank
for CoolSavings.com! Al Franken butters up our Talking
Potato for Parkay, and a worried dad-to-be rushes home to
find our Newborn Puppies for a Honda spot, Ericsson
Cellular Phone hired us to create a motley trio of Aliens
for an international spot that's getting a lot of attention. Maybe
you saw our Blockbuster ad last Halloween that featured a
cute couple of bats!
(click here to download a 3.4 mb MPEG version!) We also created a cute Lion named Kingsley for
a kid's video series. Good Day LA visited TCS for the third
time recently, and we showed off our recent projects! Our
Superbowl Bud Lobster Spot from last year was a "runaway"
hit! Adweek voted it as a "Best Spot"! Seen them talking
sandwich ads for the Florida Orange Juice Growers? We did
'em! Our
Toasty the Sheep has helped Sony sell 4 MILLION Playstation
consoles (and lots of Spyro the Dragon games) in the last two months!
Look for our Honey Nut Cheerios Frog, Rattlesnakes for a
Coors Light spot. (
click here to download a teeny Quicktime movie of it! ) Other
projects have included a Talking wallet for ATT Long
Distance Services, Empty suits for Honda, Cat paws up
to no good for a Got Milk ad, a frog for Claudia Schiffer
to kiss, a hapless action figure for Domino's Pizza
, a Baby's arms yank Dad into his crib for some McDonald's
fries, Goofy chickens for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Undersea
creatures for Texaco, a cow's udders go dry for Nabisco's
Oreo O's cereal, a cranky doll for Hostess, more
Foster Farms spots, Nutcracker dolls come to life for a holiday
spot for Pepto Bismol, intelligent cow hooves for
Chick Fil-A, a walking, talking Barbeque for Matchlight
... 1998 brought us a Saturn Award for "Best Makeup
" on "
MIMIC "!New articles online, including a nice 4 pager from
HOW Magazine on the making of the creatures of "MIMIC".
More new articles coming soon!
Check out our " What's New! " button for details and links! (Bear with us;
some links may be broken and some pages unfinished...) The makeover for the website continues! Mostly appearance
tweaks and link fixes. Speaking with Guillermo Del Toro about
possibly doing a "Hellboy" movie, enjoying the attention generated
by our Superbowl Bud Lobster
(mentions in Entertainment Weekly, Shoot, and Adweek
magazines). We created a trio of Nutcrackers for a Pepto Bismol
spot. We also created a huggable, lovable lion character
named Kingsley for a series of childrens' educational videos. Look
for our Coors Light "Rattlesnake" spot, Florida Orange
Grower's Commission "Talking Sandwich" ads, and yet another
animatronic frog for Honey Nut Cheerios! New articles online,
including a nice 4 pager from HOW Magazine
on the making of the creatures of "MIMIC". 10/98 A complete makeover for the website! Slick, consistent
navigator button layouts (we read "Web Pages That Suck" and there
were too many in there that reminded us of ours!). A new logo, animated
gifs, more anecdotes , and plenty of
info on and pix from our latest projects! A Saturn Award! For "Best
Makeup" for our Creature Effects on "MIMIC
" (Presented by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
Films). A whole new slew of commercial spots for Sony Playstation , AT&T, Citroen, Hostess
Cupcakes, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Texaco, Matchlight, Foster Farms,
Honda, Los Angeles Times, Oreo "O's" Cereal, "California's
"Got Milk?" campaign, and more! LINK heavily so people can go to new stuff 9/3/97 Go see MIMIC! And check out our MIMIC
page ! It's under construction, but it's more info on
the movies' creatures than you'll find elsewhere! Except,
perhaps, for FANGORIA issue#167 (October), which has a 5 or 6
page article on our MIMIC creatures... And we made the fine art scene! Jeff Wall, one of today's
most important artists, is having a major retrospective of his
backlit, larger-than-life photographs at the L.A. Museum of Contemporary
Art. TCS had a hand in creating some horrific effects for one of
his more chilling pieces...more to come on that project... Also, soon to come, celebrities' boats that I've puked
on! (Oh, I know it's only two, but that's more stories about puking
on celebrities' boats than you'll find elsewhere!) And look soon for our foray back into the world of commercials
(we were in MIMIC-land for nearly two years!) with a brand new Hostess
"Where's the Cream Filling?" spot, featuring a little dolly that
don't take no guff! Just got back from Tokyo! Did a Fuji-Xerox commercial and
print ad with a little animatronic character I like to call "E.T."
HIGHLIGHTS: Mr. Spielberg saying he liked our puppet "very much"
and would like to "talk about the technology" with me. (Do the words
"DreamWorks", "Synergy", and "Richer than God" conjure up any images?)
Shopping in Akihabara ("Electronic City") for gadgets. Got a COOL
10.4" flat LCD TV/Monitor! Riding the underground at rush hour!
Getting radio-controlled animatronic Godzilla and M othra toy!.
Getting drunk on Sake! Bare breasts on daytime TV! A US $800
dinner for 6 people! Paid for by the Agency! LOWLIGHTS: Expensive!
A 22-hour shooting day! Customs trying to take my Mothra spray silk! Also, look out for a new Bud Frog spot featuring our three
little guys and...an alligator!?! Webmaster's Note: Due to the recent move to our official domain, you may
experience missing pages and images, broken links, and occasional
dizziness or nausea. Please bear with us until we get everything
squared away (and do not attempt to operate heavy machinery). Thanks! So Happy New Year, already! Whew! We been crankin'! I suppose,
if you watched the Super Bowl, you saw our Bud "Buzzard "spot, as
well as our "Frozen Frogs" spot. We're especially proud of the latter
as it tested and rated higher even than the original (sorry, Stan!).
Since November, we also did a Japanese cel phone commercial with
an animatronic Kangaroo and Brad Pitt, revamped our penguins for
another Japanese cel phone spot, and created an articulated
glowing-fingered animatronic hand and suit-wrangled for a Japanese
Fuji-Xerox spot featuring E.T. We also built a 1/6th scale puppet
of Billy Zane in full outfit as the "Phantom." Shoot-wise, we did
two Bud Frog spots; the "Frozen" one and another--you'll see it
soon enough--which involves a 'gator... Gettin' ready to go to Arizona to film a Bud Lite commercial.
It involves a vulture. It involves us. I can say no more, except
that a road trip from L.A. to Kingman in a fully stocked Winnebago
with the wild and crazy TCS crew should prove, in a word, "memorable." Rick added in the TV Coverage page;
it's a little drier than the anecdotes page, for you gossip-mongers.
Ohh, the stories I could tell, if I was real stupid! Happy Halloween! I added some more libel and slander to
the Anecdotes page; you guys shore
like the DIRT, doncha! Our new Budweiser commercial
has come out, it features the famous ants and an animatronic
anteater that we built! Pic is on our home page, with a press release
and behind the scenes info soon to come! What's New | Features | Commercials
| Resume | Realistic
| Whimsical | Scary | Animatronics
| Prosthetics | Puppets | Waldo
® | Publicity | TCS Fun | FX FAQ
| Reference | Feedback
Except where noted, all contents
are the property of The Character Shop, Inc. and copyright 1995-2000
9/2002
...And check it out: This is as real as
it gets! Kind of a nice human head replica on our
Realistic Human Page...
3/2000
5/99
3/8/96
3/6/96
2/5/96
We're currently sprucing up our Sandlot dog to go to Planet
Hollywood, getting our animatronic elephant ready to go to
Las Vegas for a week, doing a little "Operation Dumbo Drop" video
release P.R., getting ready to take a brand-new E.T. animatronic
head to Japan for more Fuji-Xerox ads, creating 1/5th scale puppets
of Kurt Russell, Steve Buscemi, and Pam Grier for "Escape From L.A.",
and gearing up to take ourselves off the market for about 7 months
so we can work on the creepy feature film "Mimic."
We are also sprucing up around the old web site, starting
with this page, and including our expanded and newly updated
FX FAQ .
When I say "Whew!" I MEAN "Whew!"11/11/95
11/2/95
10/31/95
10/25/95
Rick went on National Radio today, the Tom Lykis Show (KMPC
710 AM) to discuss/debate those wacky people who think our
Bud animal spots drive kids to drink. Everybody knows that
it's Parents who drive their kids to drink!
The L.A. Times is scheduled to come to the shop 10/26 for a
photo session! The subject: the Bud
Frog Female !10/5/95
Now Playing: Our "Zork" commercial for the Aluminum Can
Association, where friendly purple aliens rock'n' bop with the
help of soda pop sipped from aluminum cans!
Anybody gotten to the gory screens of PHANTASMAGORIA yet? In
a slow period last year, we decided to take on the gore
effects for the hit CD-ROM project. Since we're PC- challenged and
Hyper MACtive, we haven't been able to see the game play! Sort of
a little break from the lovable characters we've been doing lately.
We've just finished an R and D period on some pretty wild
creatures for a major feature. We're keeping our fingers crossed
that the real deal goes through soon.....
Been keeping up with the Fox/Santilli Alien Autopsy Controversy?
Producers from Fox have asked how much it would cost to replicate
the footage with a state-of-the-art replica...
Soon you'll be able to download QuickTime clips of our Bud
Frogs from the DDB Needham site. For now, you can visit the
Digital Domain site for more still pix of the flying frogs and
amorous amphibians.
What we plan to add in the future: How-to pages! Learn how
to make body casts, molds, and prosthetics!
And, we have to ask...do you REALLY want to download
Quicktime movies? 'Cuz, we'll do it, man....
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