Kindred Journey 14 – Fon Davis
Fon Davis started his career in film with the film Tim Burton film “The Nightmare before Christmas” as a set builder and has since gone on to build models or create special effects for over 30 films. Some of these films include Star Wars prequels, Interstellar, Starship Troopers, The Matrix, Elysium, and even produced his own short called “Morav”. I found Fon’s name while researching stop-motion film which lead me to meet several people who worked on Nightmare before Christmas, him, and his entire crew at Fonco Creative. The studio was awesome, bustling with props, miniatures, sets, artifacts, equipment, and lots of people working diligently to help make other people’s stories come to life. In the short time that I’ve met and researched him, I get the feeling that Fon is a truly nice guy, very hard working, particular, but very open minded. He is a pioneer of using multiple technologies (digital, practical) to make special effects look real so that we the audience don’t even notice them. From his work at Industrial Light & Magic, to Fonco, to New Deal Studios he has helped push the art form forward. Not only that, he teaches anyone who wants to learn how to build the miniature models and techniques he uses for film in educational classes with videos and schools such as Stan Winston School. Look out for him on shows like Battle Bots, at a comic con, or building an amazing robot for the next sci-fi film.
Sources: Sense of Scale, Stan Winston School, Fonco Creative, Imdb