Sonny Tilders

Creature Designer

Sonny Tilders has spent the past two decades designing and making unusual bespoke contraptions and special effects for both the film and theatrical industries. With a degree in Graphic Design (Swinburne University, 1988) Sonny began his professional career at Australia’s foremost models and effects company, Mothers Art Productions. For ten years he worked at this Melbourne based company on dozens of TV commercials, television series and feature films. Leaving in 1998, he devoted his freelance career to the specialized field of “animatronics” (the world of high-tech puppet making). He went on to work on US feature films such as Peter Pan, Ghost Rider, The Chronicles of Narnia and Star Wars – The Revenge of the Sith as key animatronics engineer. His television credits include being lead animatronics engineer for multiple series of the US science fiction production of Farscape. Although focusing on film and television Sonny has also made puppets for Australian theatrical touring productions of The Hobbit and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. In late 2005 Sonny was approached to head up a workshop to develop and build the dinosaurs for Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular. Two touring productions of the show travelled the world in subsequent years with the success of the venture leading to the formation of the Global Creatures group with Sonny being one of the founding members of the Global Creatures board. In 2010 he was engaged as the creature designer on the Dreamworks Animation/Global Creatures production of How to Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular creating an amazing cast of animatronic dragons. The show premiered in Australia in 2012 to great acclaim, and was followed by a hugely successful season in Auckland before beginning an extended tour of the United States.