What we do

From singing sloths to the putrefying corpses of Hollywood A-listers, Animated Extras have been creating all kinds of weird and wonderful things for the Film, TV, and advertising industry since 1986.

Long time Directors of the Company and good friends Pauline Fowler and Nik Williams met on the much loved TV series “The Storyteller”, they then went on to work on Roald Dahl’s the Witches, Little Shop of Horrors, and many more. Together with their talented team they combine a unique package of expert skills, creativity and experience to fulfil the most exacting brief. Since Animated Extras began they have gone on to play a large part in many other hugely successful and award winning films such as : –

Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar nominated “Frankenstein” working on prosthetics for Robert De Niro
Academy award nominated “Shadow of the Vampire” designing and applying prosthetics on Willem Dafoe
Academy award winning “The Reader” creating prosthetics for Kate Winslet
The much acclaimed “Stardust” making and applying prosthetics on the witches, including Michelle Pfeiffer, and the ghosts
Then most recently the highly anticipated “Cloud Atlas” involving multiple character prosthetics on Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Jim Sturgess and James D’Arcy.

They have also many TV credits to their name including their on going and highly respected work on the long running forensic series Silent Witness.

Have a browse through our Photos to see the huge variety of things we can create!

We believe in researching and pioneering new moulding and casting techniques, utilising all the latest available materials, and spend a considerable amount of time and effort keeping completely up to date. We can pre-colour and paint appliances if needed and punch tipped hair for hyper realism. When able we create effects in camera but often work closely with Visual Effects to get the very best results.
Our collective skills cover a vast repertoire of effects techniques, always delivered with meticulous care and attention, including:

Suits

Animal and creature costumes, be it Alien or lifelike, created around a performer. When you can’t get your common or garden lowland gorilla to talk to someone at a bar……or even peel a banana on cue in a rain forest.. We can! But animals don’t get all the attention. When you want to add pounds on without overeating our fat suits are tailor made to enhance the curves and obesity levels of both male and female, and our pregnant bellies cover every trimester!

Prosthetics

AKA Make-up Effects (slightly cheaper than plastic surgery) including ageing, deforming, disfiguring – from the smallest scar to full body mutation.

Animatronics and Puppets

Interactive, 3 dimensional, moving realism. This work comprises everything from simple armatures in dummies to complex radio controlled effects using our own operating system with either purpose-made waldos or stock controllers and, of course, strings!!

Bodies

We specialise in close-up, high quality silicone replications of human heads in particular, be they famous or not, adult or child, isolated or on a body, and our finished work is, quite frankly, second to none. But we do go further than skin deep….autopsy bodies, organs and skeletons, decomposition and pre-historic are all catered for with enthusiasm!

Props

The “different, can’t really pigeonhole” category that to my mind has a lot of very interesting stuff in it…bronze portrait plaques, surreal masks, mummified bodies of 5,000 year old Icemen, cows you can milk, peg legs for Pirates………