A studio for things that move.
Brass To Bone is a new creative engineering studio in the United Kingdom. It designs and builds animatronics, interactive props and themed installations — the engineering behind moments that make an audience lean in.
The name
From brass to bone.
Every animatronic has two halves. The brass: frames, linkages, servos, wiring and code. The bone: the skin, the character, the sense that it might be breathing. The studio is named for the work of getting from one to the other.
Dinosaurs sit at the heart of it. They are a demanding test of the craft — large, organic, known only from fossils — and every visitor judges them in a second.
How we work
Four rules on the bench.
Mechanism first
Character comes from how something moves, so the mechanism is solved before the surface: travel, load, speed and how the motion reads from where the audience stands.
Built to run, not just to film
Attractions and escape rooms run all day. Parts are chosen and designed to be serviced, replaced and run again tomorrow.
Prototype the risky part first
The hardest motion gets built and tested early on the bench, where changing it is cheap.
Show the work honestly
Concepts are labelled as concepts. Planned specs say “planned”. Progress is dated. You always know what is real.
Technical interests
What we like to solve.
- M-01Mechanical design
- M-02Robotics
- M-03Electronics
- M-04Motion control
- M-053D printing
- M-06Prototyping
- M-07Animatronic development
Particular interests: eye and face mechanisms, props that sense people and respond, and show control that makes several moving things act as one.
Who it’s for
Built for places people visit.
Theme parks and attractions
Creatures and figures, walk-through moments, reveals that run on a cycle.
Museums and exhibitions
Interactives that visitors can touch, and mechanisms that explain themselves.
Escape rooms
Puzzles, hidden locks and sensor-triggered reveals built for daily hands-on use.
Film, TV and live events
Practical effects and one-off rigs that have to work on the day.
A new studio
How to judge us fairly.
There’s no long client list here yet. Instead, everything you need to judge the engineering is in the open.
- Every project carries a status
- Concept, in development, prototype or completed — taken straight from the project record.
- Builds are documented as they happen
- Case studies grow with dated progress, drawings, CAD and test footage.
- Drawings are marked as drawings
- Illustrations and concept diagrams are labelled, never passed off as finished work.
- The method is published
- The four stages every build follows are on the homepage, with what each one produces.