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2004 2002

2003 has gotten off to a busy start - beginning with a Bud Light Super Bowl spot, featuring a feisty Hermit Crab that puts a hustler with bad technique quickly in his place. Our animatronic Grizzly Bear suit was popular again - in two episodes of HBO’s new Carnivale series, and in a behind the scenes look for the 'Most Extreme' show - on Discovery Channel - for an episode about "Extreme Animal Disguises." We created a 'curiously cold' Mountain Goat for Altoids, a lifelike stunt effects Frog that shatters a bowl of eggs in Cheaper by the Dozen, a Giant Ant for the Got Milk ad campaign, and our Turkeys appeared on Paramount’s new A Minute with Stan Hooper show. We also rented out our Great White Shark and our Snail for two different photoshoots.

We put together a full-size, giant Colombian Mammoth (a non-wooly species) that is ravaged by wolves while stuck in the tar, for a BBC special about prehistoric life. In other, equally dramatic developments, our animatronic White Rhinoceros suit went head to head with a Toyota Tundra; and we cooked up a bizarre, mutated, Two Headed Fish in our labs for an Outback Steakhouse commercial.

Updating the continuing fine work in our Makeup department, we traveled to New York City a few times to create and apply a James Earl Jones lookalike Makeup to a modern dancer in a Verizon commercial; we traveled to a mountain 11,000 miles above sea level -in 2 degree weather!- to apply Frozen Faces makeups for Outback Steakhouses; then we were hired to get really rough and put some poor guy in a Full Body Cast for an AT&T Wireless commercial.

As if that wasn't enough, our heavy duty, stunt Crash Test Dummies were put to the test, completely rebuilt with heavy duty armatures, dressed as Hockey Players, seatbelted into a truck and crashed into a wall at 35 mph -twice- for a Dodge Ram commercial. We also created Clown Makeups for Dunkin Donuts and a Sasquatch Makeup which we combined with our Sasquatch Suit for a fun Cingular commercial.

Continuing in our tradition of memorable Characters, we built full size and oversize versions of an outrageous Cuckoo Bird and Clock for an over-the-top Ace Hardware Paint commercial; we fabricated an irrisitably cute Inner Self costume for a Danone Yogurt commercial (people are still e-mailing us with requests for pictures); and we created a complete update of 'A Christmas Without Santa's' Heatmiser - character - yet another of our creations for a popular national Altoids campaign.

Our Polee Alien also appeared in a Dolly Parton music video. One of the greatest honors we’ve received is having our Polee, Mort and Florison Aliens, and one of our A.I. Android/Robots, invited as 'guests' at the annual TED Conference -Technology, Entertainment and Design - up in Monterey; an inspiring, life affirming gathering of brilliant scientists, engineers, artists, musicians and social activists. This an a truly amazing conference, well worth looking into at: www.ted.com.

Rounding out the year’s great projects, we created more memorable costumes, beginning with a lively Kangaroo character, loaded with highly animated animatronic facial expressions for Samsung’s 'Sens' laptop, a Demon suit for the world-reknowned, spanish magician Yunke, a Donkey Head, Oxi-Magic suits for Oxi-Magic, Film Reel costumes for the Malibu Film Festival, and three Fire Demons for the award-winning FireWise PSA campaign.

Our Polee Alien, an Alien Ear Makeup and an Exploding Spacehip Effect were featured in a promotional campaign spot for the new Duck Dodgers series on Cartoon Network.