M3gan - Bruce

In 2020 I had the opportunity to design the robot Bruce for the movie M3gan. Working in collaboration with Director Gerard Johnstone, art director Jeremy Hanna, and the manufacturing team at Wētā Workshop.

Bruce was an interesting design challenge. Built by Gemma in college, Bruce needed to feel like a plausible piece of modern day robotics. Gerard talked about wanting Bruce to feel toy-like, 'a vacuum cleaner with legs'. He needed to be fun and goofy enough for Gemma's niece Cady to play with, yet strong and tough enough that you would buy his final showdown with M3gan. This was close to my final design pass on Bruce, the colour scheme you see in the movie was done by Jeremy Hanna.

This image was featured in Wētā Workshops behind the scenes video, where you can see the full scale puppeteered Bruce in action.