I've been having a lot of nightmares lately. Don't ask me why — could be the kimchi taco binge I've been on — but my dreams have been good and gory. So, like when you listen to the song that's stuck in your head just to get the damn thing outta there, I thought I'd pull up this Motherboard gem to chase the bad thoughts away. It's strange, I know, because The Creature Shop is where nightmares are made.Last year Motherboard traveled to Johannesburg to check out South Africa's top fright factory, known to those in the horror biz as The Creature Shop. Graham Press, the Shop's founder and animatronics genius, took us through his studio to check out just how one makes the scary, violent creatures in the horror movies I hate to watch.It's not all horror at The Creature Shop, but it is all carnage: Along with artist Jaco Sydman, who has a particular fascination with gore, Press showed us the studio's products, which included elephants, tigers, cadavers, wounded arms, bloody eye sockets, and a whole room of charred bodies. It's enough to make the Body Farm look positively tame.But it's not just cringe-inducing for the sake of fear. The Creature Shop has done work for everything from films like "Hotel Rwanda," "Tsotsi," "Machinegun Preacher," "Mr. Bones 2," and "District 9," to countless ads and a Die Antwoord video. It's filthy fun, and proof that really can make a name for yourself by living every day like it's a Gwar show.
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