Testimonials

“Love the new service Neill!!! I’ve been watching the online lessons and like your magazine articles, I learn more each time I watch and read. Greetings from the USA”

“These courses are fantastic! For someone who is new to prosthetics Neill provides a clear path from idea to final product. It’s great to have an online prosthetics course based in the UK, as the materials are far easier to obtain.”

“All my prosthetics skills and knowledge are due to the Gorton Studio Online Courses, which I did during the first lockdown. They were so resourceful, and there’s no looking back now. My skills have improved a lot, which has strengthened my work portfolio and I am getting hired on great projects. All credit to Neill Gorton and the knowledge he has shared in his online classes.”

“The course was absolutely full of information and practice. It was exactly what I needed to get to work with prosthetic makeup like I had dreamed for years by then!”

“…in my personal experience, the standout feature that Neill’s course offers over any other is the opportunity to observe a real workshop in action. Being right next door to Millennium FX was amazing, and we got to see things happening that you would never see anywhere else.”

“Quite simply, this course got me into a career.”

“Having watched Don’s sculpting videos on the Stan Winston School website and being familiar with both his personal and movie work, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to attend his 40-hour sculpting course at Gorton Studio in May 2018.

“I had an idea of the piece I wanted to make – a vampire bat creature, and a rough concept sketched out beforehand. Don was able to take my initial idea and push me in directions and suggest new possibilities that I wouldn’t have considered.

“He is a very generous teacher and does not prejudge the abilities of his students, our group of twelve consisted of people from all backgrounds and sculpting ability. Don spent equal time with everyone and I think we all came away with new ideas and techniques to use in future projects.

“My brief time with Don can only serve to make me a better sculptor, while students will learn about the various techniques and tools he uses to achieve those techniques, it’s his love of sculpture and boundless enthusiasm for the art that will stay with me most. Whether you are an experienced sculptor or have never picked up a block of clay before, I recommend that you attend one of Don’s courses if you get the chance.”

“I would 100% recommend Don’s course, his passion and dedication are infectious! He is an amazing teacher and he provides amazing support from the first time you express your idea to making your final finishing touches! He finds the good in everyone’s sculpture no matter what ability and he pushes you to achieve more! I had an amazing week and it always feels like coming home whenever I do a Gorton course!”

“I attended Prosthetics Boot Camp in November 2018. The course was a combination between hands on and a masterclass demonstrated by Neill Gorton. We filled a whole note book with lots of in depth information on materials, techniques and handy tips! Not only is Neill exceptionally talented but he is also a very good teacher. We had two days hands-on creating and applying flat mould appliances which was absolutely fantastic. Neill did a demonstration from scratch of the process of sculpting, creating moulds, making silicone pieces, applying, painting and facial hair laying. There was also a studio technician and a photographer in case you needed some assistance throughout the week.

“I learned so much from the Boot Camp and am now feeling confident to start sculpting and creating my own designs. We finished the course at 8.30 pm on Friday evening, it is not called a ‘Boot Camp’ for no reason!

“I believe this course is unique and there is nothing quite like it out there on offer. Any staff that I came across were professional, helpful yet friendly and approachable. We were also given high quality photographs of the step by step process which Neill demonstrated throughout the week as well as photos of our work we created with no extra cost.”

“The Neill Gorton course was my best decision yet, not knowing much going in, I came out with insight on the Industry and a whole new perspective on the job, I learnt so much from sculpting and moulding to casting and finishing off, and most of all I learnt about being a self employed SFX artist and what it takes to keep going and getting better.

“I highly recommend this course to get started, it certainly is a foot in the door. And I would like to personally thank my teacher during my course, Richard Martin, for really pushing me to my best during the 7-weeks.”

“During my time on the 7-week Make Up FX and Prosthetics Creation course I learnt so much. From the first day I knew this was going to be one of the greatest experiences of my life, which it was! We learnt everything from sculpting, to moulding, to casting, and working with so many different materials which I wouldn’t have access to in everyday life, and each day was jam packed but in the most educational way possible.

“We also had plenty of visiting tutors come in such as Cantor and Nissel, Andrew Whiteoak, and Thomas Surprenant. The fact that we were based next to the Millennium FX workshop was an extra bonus that allowed us to gain an insight as to what an everyday prosthetic workshop runs like, and we were able to gain some invaluable help from people around the workshop if we ever needed it. Overall, I’d highly recommend doing this course. It was the best career investment I’ve ever made, and I know I’ve gained friends, skills, and knowledge that I’ll have for life! I’ve since gone on to work on two independent feature films due to the portfolio images I that I gained from the course.

“Special thanks to Ian Morse, Bianca, Neill, and the team at Millennium FX for being the nicest and most helpful bunch of people during my 7 weeks at Gorton and for teaching things that I wouldn’t have access to elsewhere.”

“My team and I were privileged to spend a week being trained by Neill at his studio in Aylesbury. We learnt an incredible amount over the four days, from sculpting, moulding and applying flat piece moulds, to life casting, two-part moulds and full face application.

“It was a wonderful, creative and inspiring week. Neill is an outstanding teacher, he took us through the important areas we needed to know, taking us through each process step-by-step ensuring that we understood the process and the importance of knowing the materials. He is a fountain of knowledge and gave us so many tips on all aspects of the process and the industry.

“We loved every minute of it and none of us wanted the week to end, he really built our confidence and gave us an excellent foundation to work from. I can honestly say it was the best training I have ever had and an incredibly rewarding experience for myself and my team. We will definitely be booking more courses with him in the future and I would highly recommend the courses to anyone with an interest in prosthetics and SFX.”

“SFX pioneers don’t come more experienced or diverse than Neill Gorton. Not only is his experience in the SFX industry as comprehensive as it gets, but his clear passion for sharing his experience, talent and common sense approach is a rare and gracious one.’

“The National Film & Television School and Gorton Studio have been in partnership since 2006. Initially Neill Gorton and his amazing team came up with a prosthetics module for the NFTS SFX/VFX Diploma, developing and growing into the current 5-week module that is part of the NFTS Digital Effects MA course. Every Gorton Studio tutor has the experience to deliver the learning at the highest level. The NFTS students always engage with every aspect of the course and year-on-year find new ways of creating prosthetic effects that shock and entertain in equal measure.

“Gorton Studio instills the highest technical, creative and professional standards and the Prosthetics Module remains essential to the success of the NFTS Digital Effects MA course.”

“The course in Tel Aviv was very valuable and we have been using the flat-mould technique Neill taught us constantly ever since. It is a brilliant method that produces very good results and is also cost-effective.

“We worked intensively after the course to make a selection of generic flat-mould appliances that fit most male and female faces; necks, double chins, cheeks, foreheads, eyebrow coverings, eye bags etc. We now use this selection of pieces on a mix-and-match basis to build many different character looks on actors.

“Ours is the only studio in Israel using this method, and the appliances are popular with all the make-up artists in the area. They are very good for jobs where the budget can’t run to bespoke appliances and you can create an entire new character in a very short time. With the pieces pre-made, you can produce an ageing make-up overnight for example!

“The course also taught our makeup artists to apply and colour the prosthetics, which they can now do with confidence.”

“Neill did an outstanding job of engaging all who took part and was very good at relating the course content to the specific areas of interest of the individual students.

“As well as having the expertise in the subject area Neill is a natural teacher with an effective delivery style and excellent session management skills. This was evident in that we covered in depth, so many essential aspects of the subject in such a relatively short space of time.”

“The workshop was very informative and I loved the hands on opportunity. I particularly liked the fact that it was a small group and the openness and genuine insight into the film industry. Loved every minute of it!”

“Fantastic! Feel much more confident going into a job knowing I can apply a piece…thank you so much!”

“The course was exactly what I needed to improve my techniques and learn new ones. Also, the course did improve my confidence a lot…and the teaching was great, thank you!”

“I found the Prosthetics Boot Camp Course to be very informative thanks to Neill’s expertise and product knowledge. Neill broke down the principles of prosthetics which allowed the students to understand and follow each process required to produce very high standard prosthetic pieces. Product knowledge is a very important component in learning prosthetics and I felt we really learned a lot from Neill as he was so forthcoming with all his knowledge and information.

“I would highly recommend the course and would have loved to have stayed another week in order to put all we learned to practice. Thank you! Amazing!”

“Neill’s Prosthetics Boot Camp was a valuable and hugely rewarding experience. The course structure was perfect, covering in detail a lot of subject matter in such a relatively short space of time. Neill’s session delivery was excellent and he demonstrated teaching skills that ‘qualified’ teachers and lecturers often fail to utilise, such as relating the course material to professional or personal experience to reinforce learning. Neill also demonstrated excellent differentiated learning, effectively linking his explanations of techniques or materials to individual student’s abilities and areas of interest or experience.

“I particularly enjoyed watching Neill sculpting the character and was also grateful to him for bringing a range of moulds from storage and explaining the methods when I asked him about moulding and casting ear appliances, even though this topic was not originally part of the course. I loved every minute of the course and would whole heartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in special effects make up and prosthetics.”

“Firstly I’d like to say how much I enjoyed attending Neill’s Prosthetic Boot Camp, June 2013. I found it enormously informative and have since applied much of what I learned during the week to my own work. I found Neill to be an inspiring tutor who imparted a huge amount of knowledge clearly and concisely and managed to get through an impressive amount in the time available, making the course extremely good value for money.

“From my perspective, the course clearly broke down the processes covering traditional and alternative methods in head-casting, mould making, modelling, casting and makeup application. It was invaluable to me to see the whole process refined and polished and this is where I personally gained most value from this course. For me, the course was excellent and I would recommend it to anyone wishing to finesse existing skills and I think that beginners with the capability to keep up with the pace will gain a huge amount of knowledge and enjoy an exciting introduction to the industry.”

“My attendance of the Prosthetics Boot Camp course was the most rewarding experience I could have wished for. As a past student of Neill’s 7-week prosthetics course this was the perfect follow-up to cover some processes and materials that I felt needed to be refreshed for myself, specifically learning how to break down a sculpture and to float the individual pieces in order to create a multi piece prosthetic.

“I could not recommend this course highly enough to anyone who is seriously into sculpture and make-up FX, If you have the time and the money and most importantly the passion to learn the various different techniques and the creative processes then there is no other make-up school or course you need to look for, you have already found the perfect one.”

“I recently completed Neill’s five day Prosthetics Boot Camp, which was amazing…I have never learnt so much in such a short time. I am currently at university studying SFX MakeUp so this course was very useful to me. Neill’s teaching skill’s are second to none and I can now confidently go on my own and make silicone prosthetic pieces….”

“Incredible experience at the last Boot Camp, I had the occasion to clarify a lot of doubts, understand a lot of new ways for me to use materials and improve them. Thank you to the all team. P.s. wonderful group!”

“I had an awesome week at Boot Camp. Neill is an absolute mine of information and very willing to share. All the staff were great fun too. Thank you!!”

“Had the most INCREDIBLE time at Prosthetics Boot Camp – learnt an insane amount, and feel confident to go away and start making my own prosthetics. Was great working in such a nice studio, and with such a great team of people around me, and Neill’s teaching couldn’t really be much better! Thanks so much Gorton Studio!!!”

“I have to tell you all that “Boot Camp” was, is, and will always be, one of the high points in my makeup career! What a privilege to watch a master at work at his craft…simply phenomenal! Commencing the 5 days course with a full-head silicon life cast, casting out positive face casts, and demonstrating flat-plate prosthetics (which we would be doing ourselves) by sculpting his 3rd eye makeup … and that was just the 1st day!!

“Over the next 4 days Neill, sculpted a witch face, broke down and floated the sculpt, made snaps of forehead, nose and chin in plaster and polyurethane, transferred the floated facial features to the appropriate snaps and flat-plate for cheeks, made the molds for all five appliances in silicon, plaster, polyurethane, and epoxy, cast the appliances in Super Baldiez encapsuated silicon gel, and finally, applied the makeup he’d created…phew, it was a whirlwind of information…and an exhilarating ride!

“That doesn’t even include the time, we as students, spent sculpting, moulding, casting, and applying our own flat-plate prosthetics, with Neill guiding us each step of the way and providing encouragement and helpful critique…invaluable!! For me, I was most interested in learning more about the various kinds of molds and mold-making, I was not disappointed! Neill knows his materials forward, backward, and sideways…and the techniques and tips he provided…fantastic! I now feel armed to buy the materials I saw demonstrated and give them a go, confident I’ll have some measure of success.

“My enthusiasm was matched by all the other Boot Camp participants, as each day we would gather excited about what we would learn, not only in class, but at breakfast, lunch and dinner together. Boot Camp is an appropriate term for the course because like soldiers the shared experiences have bonded us together!

“I cannot recommend Boot Camp too highly! It is impossible to put a value on what I got from the course. It was worth every minute and penny. It was not a cost, it was an investment, one I am glad I took advantage of and would again, in a second! To Neill and all his fabulous people in Falmouth, my sincerest and deepest gratitude.”

“I loved it! I liked creating the scars. The cool thing is that once you’ve done it a couple of times, you get the idea of it, the hang of it and then it’s just changing it and figuring out how you want to take on it.”

“I would just like to thank the whole team for all the work that went on. I have listened to Hannah telling friends and family about her experience and to see and hear her confidence and the fact she is so inspired is wonderful for a parent, believe me it didn’t often happen during her school years. Thank you so much the whole experience was lovely from the barbecue through to the scary mask sitting in the back of the car on the way home!”

“The staff on the course were amazing!! They were all so friendly and so helpful. They let me try out new things and create whatever I wanted. Some challenges I found on the course were having to change plans when something went wrong, I overcame this challenge by having to think quickly and improvise and trying to be creative as possible. My favourite part was definitely watching the demonstrations, seeing how professional makeup artists do it and learning new tips and tricks.

“I’d just like to also add, the equipment and the utensils are the real deal and they’re what the people at the studios work with and I think it’s really cool how we got a chance to have a go with them and play around with it and see how they work. I learnt a lot at Gorton Studio’s summer course and I would honestly recommend it to everyone interested in SFX makeup.”

“I enrolled on the course to re-visit prosthetic techniques that I had not used for a while in order to improve my confidence with the subject as I was preparing to teach small aspects of prosthetics in the upcoming academic year. As the only teacher in the group I did require a slightly different set of skills in comparison with the rest of the group. However the course was well tailored to each of our individual needs by the fantastic tutor and the facilities were more than adequate to accommodate this.

“I am very satisfied with the course and feel confident to pass knowledge I learnt in the studio onto my students.”

“Thank you for the seven weeks at Gorton Studio, it was a brilliant experience and nice to see a professional FX workshop for the first time. The course was great, I was really impressed with what I achieved there and the level of productivity maintained throughout…I hope to stay in touch and look forward to what lies ahead.”

“I could not stress enough how great Dave was as a teacher: a capacity to push students artistically forward alongside a sense of humour and a way of cajoling students along with their work was ideal for that situation. Not only that, he was prepared to let me have a go and didn’t say no to what I wanted to try in my final project. So in this regard I could learn what my capacity was as an artist and make my own mistakes. Dave made me an overall better artist and for this I owe him a debt of gratitude.

“The other thing I appreciated was meeting some of the artists and technicians that work for Millennium FX…these guys were great blokes and gave thoughtful advice and assistance with my project. It was also interesting to learn a bit about the way they got into the industry…thanks again for making me feel welcome!”

“I found the course to be well structured, informative and stimulating. It is a benefit that all the materials are provided within the course fee. Dave was always on hand to offer advice and encouragement, pushing us to exceed our expectations. Martina was extremely helpful as was all the team from the workshop.

“I would strongly recommend this course to anyone wishing to study prosthetics.”

“Neill Gorton’s prosthetics and animatronics was one of the best learning experiences of my life: jam packed full of creative work.”

“I guess I’d say I think I was probably in a position to take advantage, and made the most out of the course in the respect to having already experimented with materials like fibreglass, silicone and urethanes for mould making and for special effects type work on short films, as well as having practiced my sculpting as much as time permitted over the last two years. “

“I came onto the course without any previous experience in the industry, having just a degree in illustration under my belt. I thought I might be a little out of my depth, but our course tutor, Dave, was amazing at showing us the ropes and giving us all the help and advice we needed to make a start in the prosthetics industry. Everything that we needed was provided for, and I made some excellent friends during the 7 weeks in the studio; I only wish I could have stayed longer! I’d recommend the course to anyone who wants a career in make-up and prosthetics.”

“The 7-week course was the most enjoyable and helpful experience I’ve had in my professional life, never learnt so much in such a short period of time, time flies when you are doing what you really love doing and being in such a wonderful workshop, I wish it didn’t end …ever!! Thank you to my amazing tutors, especially David Bonneywell, you gave me so much, it was the most well spent money of my life! Also thank you to all Millennium FX team I had contact with, you are amazing and tireless, thank you for everything, I’m really grateful to have had this experience.”