Mark Hunter

Mark Hunter is a British designer and puppeteer who worked for the Creature Shop from 1995-2005, an exact decade. He served as an animatronic designer for Lost in Space, Farscape, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In addition to working with animatronics, Mark also helped puppeteer the Gryphon in the 1999 film version of Alice in Wonderland. But it's a pity that Hunter was uncredited for that performance, because he got to work alongside several Creature Shop performers like Nigel Plaskitt, Kiran Shah, Sue Dacre, and Victoria Willing, to name a few. Outside of the Creature Shop, he worked on numerous films over the years like puppeteering on Seed of Chucky and doing animatronic effects for others like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He seems to be another expert at animatronics since he's been a designer and/or technician of them for several years. According to The Telegraph website, Mark Hunter later utilized his animatronic experience to design a prosthetic hand known as Bebionic, launched in 2010. Who knew a former Creature Shop designer could invent such a technical hand? That's one of the wonderful things about the Creature Shop, someone who worked with that company could be capable of anything, it all depends on the person. Mark's latest project was on the 2010 film The Nutcracker: The Untold Story, where he was senior animatronics technician. Hunter later stepped down from film work to utilize the Bebionic, at least I think he did, because nobody has heard from him after 2011. Hopefully sometime in the future, he'll get interviewed and be acknowledged for all of the animatronic films he did, as well as invent the Bebionic hand in 2010. Apart from that, he should be proud of how much effort he put into making animatronics for all of those films. Mark Hunter, you've done wonderful at the Creature Shop, and you carried on those skills for so many productions over the years. If you're still working, keep on doing it and make sure you keep getting recognized for designing the Bebionic hand. You're like one of the mechanical geniuses. Excellent animatronic engineering Mark. Give yourself a "hand" Hunter!

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