“I like to think I’m smart enough to say yes to everything, but the reality is is that I’m too dumb to say no“
Ben Eadie
Raptor House FX wowed passersby in NYC and Maker Faire attendees with a working animatronic severed hand created for Netflix’s Wednesday. If you read about it in Make:, saw it in real life, or were one of the 42M views on YouTube, you’ll have some idea of how impressive it is. At Maker Faire Bay Area 2024, they spoke about the process behind it, creative engineering in general, and dispensed excellent advice for anyone getting into professional prop-making for the film industry. A lot of their wisdom is great for freelancers of all trades, so it’s worth a watch for anyone looking to boost their entrepreneurship skills.
Solving problems before they’re problems
Jesse Velez (Raptor House FX) and Ben Eadie (Star Trek Beyond, Ghostbusters Afterlife) discuss the do’s and don’ts of creative problem-solving when time and budgets are challenging. If you’ve landed a job to make something no one has ever made before (especially one that bigger shops have turned down) and don’t know what to do, their sage advice can help dodge project-ending headaches. You’ll learn how to work within constraints, communicate realistic expectations, and some tricks to avoid feature creep.
Jesse Velez wanted to talk about “when you are given a job with a super limited timeline, limited budget, constraints of any kind, because it oftentimes makes creative individuals freeze up and not know what to do.“ To that end, this talk answers questions like: How do you assemble the right team? How do you provide estimates to a client when the final product is a working prototype? And what do you tell your clients when things go “wrong”?
Raptor House FX is a multidisciplinary practical effects studio serving clients in film, television, and other creative industries. They use old-school techniques paired with cutting edge digital design and rapid manufacturing to turn around projects efficiently, to world class standards. We’ve covered the incredible Wednesday Thing build before, and featured it on the cover of Make: Volume 85.
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