About Us
Providing the best – best quality, best solution, best value
Now based in Buckingham, Crawley Creatures Ltd began in 1986, originally at an old Mill in the Oxfordshire village of Crawley. The company was founded and is still run by creative director Jez Gibson-Harris, who has over 30 years’ experience in the Film, TV, Advertising and Model Making Industry. He began in the industry as an Animatronics Designer and worked on many iconic films including the creation of Jabba the Hutt in the Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi.
The key aspect about Crawley Creatures, is that it is about bringing ideas to life, and these ideas can come from anywhere! Although our work began and continues to be in the film and tv industry, Jez’s keen interest in Natural History also led the company to seek out projects within the museum sector. Since then, we have worked on numerous museum projects, both small and large scale, for clients worldwide. see here
Diversity and adaptability have always been key features of our approach and so when we received an enquiry for a research and development project to create an animatronic head-form to test a breathing apparatus, we were keen to take it on. Success and further work in this field resulted in the development of the Porton Man, and the creation of i-bodi, a subsidiary company of Crawley Creatures, that develops and manufactures specialised customer defined products, for chemically challenging environments.
The last twist and turn took place in 2014 when Jez’s interest in natural history combined with his love of chocolate! This also marked the time where Jayne Gibson-Harris took on a more involved role in the company and helped to set up Timebites, which produces handmade chocolates in the shapes of fossils and extinct creatures.
Our full-time crew is small but as you can see from above, experienced in a range of disciplines! Apart from Jez and Jayne, we have Mike Franklin, our chief design engineer, and our office manager Sally Haslam, who keeps us all on track. We also have a reliable and trusted pool of specialist sub-contractors that we can call on when required. Our workshop is a modern, light building, designed to meet the needs of our company with designated spaces for moulding, sculpting, machining, electronics design, engineering and art working. As a company we always aim to provide the best quality and we are guided by a quality management system registered to ISO 9001:2015 that ensures our customers always receive the best possible service.
If you have an idea that you need bringing to life, we would love to hear from you, so please get in touch.
