Dave Elsey Bio | Igor Studios

Dave Elsey Bio
September 06, 2009

Born in London in 1967, Dave Elsey has had a life long passion for movies, and special effects. Dave wanted to do Makeup effects from the moment he saw his first monster movie, so it came as no surprise to anyone that is exactly what he did, as soon as he left school.

From creating fantastical creatures in the television series Farscape, to Universal Studio’s The Wolfman, Creature FX Designer Dave Elsey has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to create memorable characters using make up and animatronics for the last twenty-four years.

Elsey’s resume reads like a cult-film dream list. He created creature effects in ‘Alien 3’; worked as a special makeup-effects artist on’ Hellraiser’, ‘Mission: Impossible’, ‘Mission impossible 2’, and ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’, and honed his animatronics skills in the cult classic of ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ (Though not the supervisor on this movie, Dave was honored to have contributed to the creature FX that were nominated for the Oscar for the Best Effects, Visual Effects.)

Dave is perhaps most well known by genre fans for his role as the Creative Supervisor on the sci-fi TV award winning series ‘Farscape’, and the subsequent mini series for which he designed and maintained up to 600 different creatures. In 2007, over four years after its completion, Farscape was named as #4 on TV Guide’s list of “The 30 Top Cult Shows Ever”.The show is credited as changing Makeup FX on Television forever.

In the 1990’s Dave created some visually stunning and many say, ‘shocking’ music videos when he collaborated with his friend, Director Chris Cunningham on such music films as Aphex twin’s Come to Daddy, and the Africa Shocks video for Leftfield and Afrika Bambaataa. The acclaimed music video Come to Daddy was voted number 3 best video of all time in a January 2005 Guardian poll, and one of the 100 Greatest Scary Moments by E4 viewers. It was also nominated in 1998 MTV Video Music Awards For Best Special Effects. Dave also created the hauntingly beautiful baby for the acclaimed music video, Teardrop, from the Massive Attack album Mezzanine. The barrier breaking video featured a fetus in the womb (Created by Dave) lip-synching the song. It was directed by Walter Stern.

For his role as the Creature Shop Supervisor for ‘Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith’, Elsey was responsible for bringing to life all of the animatronics and prosthetic creatures for legendary Director George Lucas. Among others, Dave created such characters as the Wookiees, the Utapauns, charred Anakin Skywalker, and the twisted Emperor Palpatine.

Since then Dave has worked on the movie ‘Ghost Rider’ with Nicholas Cage, and collaborated as Creature Supervisor with Richard Taylor of Weta Workshop in New Zealand to handle all the make up effects on the independent cult film ‘Black Sheep’ for director Jonathan King. This work resulted in Dave being nominated for, and winning the Quanta’s Film and Television Award for excellence in Makeup.

Dave was Creature Supervisor for Spike Jonze’s long awaited creature movie extravaganza, ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, based on an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s story, which will be released in 2009.

Dave followed this by creating the title character for the movie-opera, Eternity man by acclaimed director Julien Temple. It won the ATOM Award for Best Experimental Film; it was also named the Best Performing Arts program at the international 2009 Rose d’Or

Most Recently Dave collaborated with Makeup legend Rick Baker for the much-anticipated 2009 Universal picture ‘The Wolfman’.

For the work Dave Elsey created on ‘Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith’, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated him for Oscar for Achievement in Makeup for the 78th Academy Awards He was further nominated for a Saturn award by The Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy & Horror Films, for this film.

Credits

Television

Trading Races Documentary | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Farscape season 1 (22 eps) | Creature Effects Supervisor
Farscape season 2 (22 eps) | Creature Effects Supervisor
Farscape season 3 (22 eps) | Creature Effects Supervisor
Farscape season 4 (22 eps) | Creature Effects Supervisor
Farscape ‘ Peacekeeper Wars’ | Creature Effects Supervisor
Big Garage | Creature Effects Supervisor
Cold Lazerus | Make Up Effects Supervisor
How to be a little sod | Make Up/ Animatronic Supervisor
Hunting Venus | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Prime suspect 5 | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Silent Witness 7 | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Seaforth | Make Up Effects Supervisor
The comic strip | Make Up Effects Supervisor
The hunger | Make Up Effects Supervisor
The wanderer | Make Up Effects Supervisor
The toon room | Animatronics Supervisor
The uninvited | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Big Garage | Animatronics Supervisor
Casualty | Make Up Effects Supervisor

Television Commercials

NAB – Yeti | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Yellow Pages – Clown | Make Up Effects Supervisor
VB – Shane Warne characters | Make Up Effects Supervisor
XBOX – Demon | Creature Effects Supervisor
USPS – Monster | Creature Effects Supervisor
Pirelli – Goddess | Creature Effects Supervisor
Nike – Good Vs Evil – Demon | Creature Effects Supervisor
Ronseal Tiles – Pelican | Creature Effects Supervisor
Mc Donalds – Cavemen | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Golden Wonder -Nik Naks Alien | Creature Effects Supervisor
Campbells – Malcolm meatball | Creature Effects Supervisor
Bosch – Handtools | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Allied Dunbar – ‘Grim Reaper’ | Creature Effects Supervisor
Bonaqua – ‘Mermaid’ | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Westlights | Creature Effects Supervisor
Der Spiegal – ‘Aliens’ | Creature Effects Supervisor
Heart fm – ‘Alien’ | Creature Effects Supervisor
NSPCC – ‘Foetus’ | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Pizza Hut – ‘Klingons’ | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Conservative Party ‘evil eyes’ | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Slotts Mustard | Creature Effects Supervisor
Tabboo – Tango Footbal ‘Hell’ | Creature Effects Supervisor
Nike – ‘History’ | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Bonaqua – Chicken | Creature Effects Supervisor
Angel Delight – Moosehead | Creature Effects Supervisor

Music Promos and Stills

Massive Attack – Teardrop | Creature Effects Supervisor
Aphex Twin – Come to Daddy | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Bluetones – Marblehead Johnson | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Ronseal Tiles – Pelican | Creature Effects Supervisor
Blur – ‘Girls and Boys’ | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Leftfield – ‘Afrika Shocks’ | Make Up Effects Supervisor
Manic Street Preachers – ‘If you tolerate this’ | Make up Effects
Warrant – ‘Dirty rotten filthy stinking rich’ | Make up Effects