Made for Bit Parts

NEWBURY PARK — A few blocks away from the largest biotechnology firm in the world, a local company is producing sheep, rats, dolphins and beavers that are virtually identical to each other.

Some of the animals created by this company--whose operations are concealed from the public’s eye in one of the many look-alike industrial buildings in Newbury Park--even talk, dance, make faces, drive cars and do a variety of other disturbingly human things.

About the only thing that Jim Boulden’s animals don’t do is breathe. However, a team of designers, craftspeople and master puppeteers on hand could easily accomplish that task, if the job called for it.

As the proprietor of Animal Makers Inc., the ex-advertising executive and his staff specialize in manufacturing artificial and animatronic animals for use in commercials, movies and television shows.

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They may not have the budget--or the cloning capability--of neighboring biotech giant Amgen Inc., which clones genes as it develops medicine.

But many of the shop’s creations are instantly recognizable to regular viewers of prime-time television, from the Budweiser frogs and alligators to Salem, the talking black cat on “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.”

Other creatures emerging from Boulden’s shop--which looks like a cross between a natural history museum storeroom, a bike factory and a hobby supply store--end up as stand-ins for well-known animal stars. They’ve filled in for Lassie, Flipper and the crafty raccoons on “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.”

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“To me, these are my stars,” Boulden said. “The Marlon Brandos of my world are Lassie, Flipper and the Budweiser frogs.”

In Boulden’s world, the rooms are literally stacked to the rafters with fake animals and animal parts. A catalog of his firm’s wares lists everything from insects, gorillas and hedgehogs to dog legs, elephant trunks and monkey paws--all available for rental or purchase.

Boulden says the animals in the catalogs are lower cost for the lower-cost productions. “For the bigger [productions], they get what they want,” he said referring to custom orders.

In one storage area, dogs of all sizes and breeds sit silently on shelves alongside scores of calico, tabby and Siamese cats. Elsewhere in the shop, perched on the roof of a room that functions as a business office, a life-size rhinoceros and hippopotamus oversee workers assembling animatronic birds for another project.

“There’s all kinds of little animals stuck in shelves--hamsters, rats, butterflies,” Boulden said. “You go up those stairs right there and I’ve got chimps stacked up in the corner that we used in a spot for HBO.”

Boulden, 41, has come a long way from the company he founded more than 15 years ago in an Oxnard garage, making and marketing stuffed animals for store window displays with his former wife.

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Before he established Animal Makers Inc., Boulden worked for more than a decade as a fix-it guy for Hollywood productions running into trouble with their four-legged, furry and feathered actors.

“They’d call me up and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem--this dog is in a dangerous situation with a car, so can you make us a dog?’ ” Boulden said.

Among the animal doubles created in Boulden’s early days was Tom Hanks’ canine partner in the cop/buddy comedy, “Turner & Hooch,” that took a bullet while attempting to subdue a bad guy.

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“When animals get into dangerous situations, it’s among the most impactful scenes in many shows,” Boulden said. “We create those scenes here, and the live animals stay in their trailers or cages.”

“When we did ‘Turner & Hooch,’ they literally had an air-conditioned trailer for the dog,” he added.

In 1992, Boulden decided to build an entire business around his unique specialty. He began recruiting a staff of artisans and puppeteers and moved the shop to Newbury Park, settling at the current site on Turquoise Circle.

Animal Makers Inc. employs about 15 full-time workers but can quickly expand to 40 to handle a large project on tight deadlines.

Now, Boulden’s own animals are getting the VIP treatment and generating their share of fans.

Eyeing one of several Salem cats mounted on what look like wooden fruit crates packed with cables, levers and other machinery that control each one’s movements, Boulden said: “That’s a star. He gets fan mail. A lot of it.”

Another Animal Makers creation, a mean-looking bear standing about 10 feet tall, fought with Brad Pitt in “Legends of the Fall,” and wrestled Steven Seagal in “On Deadly Ground.” It was operated by seven puppeteers and Boulden himself inside the suit.

The same bear, albeit in a more cheerful mood, appears again in a beer commercial sipping suds on a dusty porch.

While lacking the status of full-length features, Boulden said he finds the work doing commercials more enjoyable.

“It’s fun, it’s entertaining and it’s not as grizzly,” he said.

Dharla Jo Curry, production coordinator at Animal Makers, said one attraction for many of the company’s clients is the need for fewer takes when using animatronic puppets, which keeps costs low and projects on schedule.

“Where it might take a real animal all day to do this one thing, we can usually do it right the first or second time,” she said.

As she walked toward the rear of the cavernous shop, workers in aprons inspected a 6-foot-tall mold of a manatee, which will be featured in an upcoming movie.

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A second crew nearby sewed and fitted a black neoprene skin on a finished fiberglass and epoxy casting of one of the sea cows, while other workers airbrushed red and blue feathers that would soon become the plumage for a dancing, singing macaw.

“We do most of our sculpture here, and once it’s sculpted, depending on if it needs to move or not, we’ll make a shell with the mechanics inside,” Curry said. “We put the animatronics in the shell to make the animal come alive.”

The spark of life for many of Boulden’s animals comes from hundreds of feet of black cables, much like the kind that switch gears on 10-speed bikes, and pistons powered by compressed air.

Smaller movements, like twitching whiskers, moving eyes or pricking ears, are done with radio control units and servomotors, which are normally used to pilot model airplanes.

All of these gizmos attach like muscles to a skeleton made at the shop from aluminum billets. Shafts turning on ball bearings serve as the animals’ joints.

Once assembled, workers affix feathers plucked from chickens and turkeys, or synthetic fur to make the animal complete. Scaly creatures, like alligators and tortoises, merely need a painter’s touch to make them look convincing.

“A lot of times a production needs something like a cat that can get thrown out a window,” Curry said. “It doesn’t need to move, so we’ll figure, finish it to make it look real, but we won’t put any mechanics in it.”

Like the late Jim Henson, whose company is Animal Makers’ main competitor, Boulden plans on putting together a family-oriented television show drawing from his cast of animal characters, many of whom have already appeared on the tube.

“We have some interest from Fox and Nickelodeon in it,” he said. “We may have something this season, a half-hour special just to introduce the characters and show the world.”

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Admiring an animatronic bald eagle that he hopes will one day become the entertainment industry’s best shot of our national symbol, Boulden said his work as a Hollywood specialist is like wish-fulfillment.

“It’s basically funding our dreams. We’re like a bunch of kids here,” he said, before sticking his head into the toothy maw of one of his lions.

“It’s like, ‘How do we get people to pay us to do this stuff?’ ”