Bruce Kit Signed By Joe Alves!

This past Father's Day, I was presented with a couple of pretty amazing gifts from my wife, with some help from our friends over at Pestilence Labs!

I was very honored to have Joe Alves, Greg Nicotero, and Dennis Prince sign a piece of our Bruce The Mechanical Shark kit at WonderFest this year. I mean, how cool is that!!

My wife presented me with framed pics as well as the signed Bruce piece on Sunday. It's gonna make a great display in my studio. I wish I had been there to meet everyone in person, but we just weren't able to make it this year.

Joe Alves is an American film director and production designer perhaps best known for his work on Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I should have reached out to Joe as soon as I decided to do a Mechanical Bruce kit. I had collected tons of reference materials, but there were a few places inside the shark where I had to basically guess how it might have been designed. I have no doubt Joe would have been able to provide me with a lot of those missing details. I did the best I could, I just hope Joe wasn't appalled by my efforts.

Thanks Joe, for inspiring and delighting us all with your amazing talents!

Greg Nicotero is an American special make-up effects creator, television producer, and director.

Greg Nicotero was nice enough to reach out to me when we were first releasing our Bruce kit. He shared a couple of pics of his life-sized Bruce for me to use as reference. I think it was his subtle way of telling me to double check the dorsal fin and tail on my sculpt. I guess I didn't realize just how distorted they had both gotten as a result of making so many adjustments to the rest of the shark. When you look at something for so long - you get used seeing it and it starts to look right to you.

Thank you, Greg! You played a part in making our Bruce kit a better product!

Joe Alves and Greg Nicotero standing next to Greg's Bruce restoration.

I also want to thank Mark and Shanna Warthling from Pestilence Labs for making this possible. They sponsored Joe this year, took the photos during the signing, and even gifted me a signed copy of 'Joe Alves - Designing Jaws.' It's an amazing book - I'm very grateful! Mark also presented Joe with his very own build-up of our Bruce kit at WonderFest - also very cool. I'm glad Joe has one now. :-) I'll be adding Mark's Bruce to the Customer Gallery ASAP.

Lastly, I want to thank our friend, Scott Johansen from Model Club TV fame. Scott was kind enough to haul a big box of our Tusken Raider busts to WonderFest this year - asking for nothing in return! We really appreciate your support and friendship, Scott!

Ok...I better wrap this up....it's starting to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech.