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Miniature model maker Fon Davis has worked on over thirty feature films across a two decade career. He’s an alumnus of the Industrial Light and Magic Model Shop and Disney, having produced concept art and made models for Starship Troopers, Galaxy Quest, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. Recently, he’s worked on Interstellar, Guardians of the Galaxy and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium.

Fon founded his own design and fabrication studio, Fonco Creative, in 1997 in San Francisco, and after setting up shop in the premises of Vanaheim Studios in Los Angeles, he bought the whole 16,000 square foot facility out at the end of first quarter 2017, renaming it Fonco Studios.

Join us for a fantastic chat about the importance of a portfolio in the special effects industry (and why Fon didn’t wind up needing one when he interviewed at ILM), the possibilities of virtual reality in entertainment, how special effects folks insert themselves into the movies they work on and the questions from the show’s Patreon backers!

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I didn’t think I’d be able to say this with only four episodes of this podcast under my belt, but I am very pleased to be able to mark my guest for episode 5 off my wish list:

Gavin Dunne, Miracle of Sound. Image sourced from the Miracle of Sound profile on Last.FM

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present for your listening pleasure, Gavin Dunne, the one-man band known on the Internet as the Miracle of Sound!

Gavin sat down with me over Skype on Thursday evening, Ireland time (which translated to before sparrows, Cairns time) to talk about how he went from the frontman of a band that broke up on the verge of hitting it big to a full-time, self-employed musician with a dedicated fan base that stretches across the world!

Gav was a pleasure to chat with, and had plenty of stories and insights on what it takes to become your own personal success story in the Internet age. Plus it was fun to geek out with him about games toward the end! Listen and enjoy!