Barrie Gower

Barrie Gower is a fivetime Emmywinning prosthetics designer Gower grew up in the north of England where his father managed a cinema As he became a teenager he became heavily involved in artmostly drawings and sculpture Still in those early days his mission felt like more of a pipe dream With the support of his mom Gower applied for art programmes stumbling upon one promising option at the London College of Fashion He didnt get into the university in the first year as he didnt have any evidence of doing any hairstyling or makeup although he had a portfolio His mother enrolled him in a hairdressing course and the following year he was accepted at LCF where he managed to meet quite a lot of industry professionals Barrie began his career in the film industry in 1996 after graduating from the London College of Fashion with a HND in Specialist Makeup His first role was at the BBC Visual Effects Department on projects including Red Dwarf and Silent Witness The following year Barrie was employed on his first major feature film Steven Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan Barrie has since worked for industryleading companies and individuals such as Weta Workshop and multiaward winner Rick Baker Barrie contributed to the Academy Awardwinning prosthetics for The Wolfman 2011 and The Iron Lady 2012 After 10 years working in the Harry Potter film world and then freelancing on other largescale projects Gower decided to start his own company BGFX with his wife Sarah also a prosthetics designer Theyd met working on a film in Budapest At that time she was part of the CGI visual effects department BGFX began as an athome studio but quickly launched into the big leagues when it received its first major opportunity designing prosthetics for season four of HBOs Game of Thrones Thrones was the beginning of a fruitful relationship with HBO one that has seen the couple spearheading designs for many more of the networks biggest hits among them House of the Dragon and The Last of Us For the former the job primarily centred around the ageing and decay of Paddy Considines character the doomed king Viserys Targaryen Simultaneously BGFX was handling The Last of Us which Gower is quick to describe as the biggest thing weve ever done For that series the company was tasked with designing and executing a whole world consumed by a fungus plus the resulting zombielike creatures that are born out of those spores They didnt have to start from scratch however relying on the catalogue of work created for the original 2013 video game by developer Naughty Dog