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Swindon’s Podpad Studios Is Bringing the Industry back to Town

Swindon and wider Wiltshire are known for a great many things, but its industrial prowess was never really one of them.

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Traditionally largely agricultural, Wiltshire’s development during the Industrial Revolution was related to the cloth industry. During that era, huge mechanical machines were employed to separate, spin, refine and weave cloth for usage around the world.

Today, those incredible machines are long gone from Swindon’s factory floors. But there’s one place where curious mechanical wonders can still be witnessed – Podpad Studios (https://podpadstudios.wixsite.com/podpadstudios).

Founded by Mark Enright, who left a 25-year teaching career to chase his dream of prop creation, Podpad is home to steampunk robots, giant mechanical spiders and Mad-Max style vehicles. It’s a wonderland, created by a man who found wonder in film props himself as a child.

Inspired by the animation work of Ray Harryhausen in his youth, Mark dedicated his spare time to figuring out how those iconic props functioned and how he could craft them himself.

His goal was always to work in special effects, an ambition which led him to a degree in fine art. From there, he worked for two years for a props company in Shepperton, doing work for the Benny Hill Show, amongst others.

Sensing his position within the company wasn’t sustainable, Mark began training to become a secondary school teacher of art, music and drama, a position he held in Swindon until 2015 when he took the plunge and launched Podpad Studios as a real, honest to goodness prop maker.

Now travelling across the globe to comic conventions to display and sell his steampunk & cyberpunk inspired creations for charity, Mark’s boldness has been rewarded.

In his workshop, Mark has created Harry Potter-inspired owls which respond when spoken to, steampunk-styled R2D2 robots and so much more. It’s a far cry from the dreary orders he received for weapons for low-budget movies.

His real triumphs, however, have been in his fully functional, totally transformed vehicles. These include Steamer, a wildly inventive ‘steam-powered’ Batmobile. It’s an incredible machine, but it’s more than just good looking – it’s totally interactive too, with an animatronic Batman in the drivers’ seat and even notes in Braille on the exterior for the visually impaired.

Further capitalising on the sort of Bat-mania which has inspired everything from animated Lego movies to hugely popular online slots like Batman Begins (https://casino.betfair.com/c/slots), Mark has also created an astonishing tribute to the 1995 Batmobile (http://www.batmobilehistory.com/1995-batmobile.php) in the form of the ‘95 Spider Batmobile’, seen above.

Almost organic in its design, the 95 Spider Batmobile takes inspiration from the bio-mechanical works of H. R. Giger.

That’s not all you’ll find at Podpad studios either, as everything from old washing machines to Smart cars have been transformed into unimaginable, wondrous creations.

So, what’s next for Mark and his team at Podpad? Well, their dream is to create a hub for innovative mechanical work right here in Swindon, building creations out of the old engineering works. It’s a dream for Mark, but given the success of Podpad studios thus far, it’s not a dream you’d bet money against.

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