Modelmaking began in 1976 on a team making a 3 metre high model of St.Pauls cathedral and a 20 metre long model of Windsor castle. for a model village near Bournemouth. make-up for the Netherlands a moving sculpture for a commercial for the national telephone guide was commissioned in 1985. This was built in England and then shipped over for construction and filming. A call came next to ask if we could build a flying saucer and a martian in 7 days, for a Postbank advert. Three teams worked late for a week and 7 days later the saucer was shipped across the channel and was flown on wires through Aalsmeer studios, smoke, lights and a little man in a rubber suit. before the filming was finished, three more postbank commercials were begun and the move to Holland was inevitable. This began the mad period of the late 80's The company outgrew three workshops and at any one time two or three models for stills photography would be in models and effects for still photography and commercials, but increasingly more product mock-ups and design
prototypes began to come in. There have been some occasional tricks for the theatre and also a fascinating sojourn into the world of oil painting restoration. A regular client for quite some years was the twice yearly set of 'Action Man' commercials. As a lot more commercial work was being done digitally this made space for computers also to join in with the modelmaking, Some models that were very time consuming to be done by hand can now be constructed in 3D software and cut out by computer router. Again with the increase in work done digitally,
This was followed soon after by the year of working on the spaceships for Alien at Bray Studios, a great team and a beautiful place. Following some travelling, freelance work in and around London started with some architectural modelmaking and then some music video work. Next came television commercials, models, costumes and effects for promotional campaigns, stills photography and exhibition decor which eventually lead from London to Shepperton to Paris and back for the third time to Bray Studios for three years with Gerry Anderson of
Thunderbirds fame to work on the Terrahawks television series. This soon was really being paid to play. After an initial progress and perhaps two or three commercials all at once. After some years at this it soon became apparent that more time has been spent also in this area. Since the beginning of applying modelmaking experience into computers,
a smaller form would be more suitable and the business slowed down to lower overheads and smaller workspace that allowed more controlled output and a more relaxed working atmosphere. This worked well thorough the 90's with a regular turnover of talented freelancers, never taking on more than two or three jobs at a time. Still a wide variety of work came through the workshop, mostly
quite some experience has built up in the digital world and Creatrix has begun to supply Apple Macintosh software and hardware, basic training, troubleshooting and help, as well as print and webdesign work. See the appropriate links on the home page.
period the scripts came thick and fast and the models and effects were created on the fly by an efficient team effort. After the second series, the resulting team of modelmakers became the core of the group to become 'Creatrix' shortly before the move to Holland. After creating a complete music video clip including full sword and sorcery cast, costumes, locations wardrobe and effects