Special effects studio replicates ‘Jaws’ shark with 3D printing
See and touch the quarter-scale shark at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
If you, like me, rushed to see Steven Spielberg’s Jaws in cinemas last year for the film’s 50th anniversary—it can’t be beat on a big screen—then you’ll also be excited to learn about an ongoing exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles that celebrates the iconic movie. The exhibition, which runs into July 2026, would not be complete without the film’s underwater villain Bruce, who has been replicated on a smaller scale with the help of 3D printing.
Special effects studio KNB EFX, which has worked on a number of Quentin Tarantino films as well as The Walking Dead, True Detective, and more, was commissioned to create a quarter-scale replica of the animatronic shark Bruce for the exhibition. This replica was to be interactive and include a mechanical internal structure that could withstand repeated manipulation and touching.
Only one of the original Bruce models used in the film Jaws still exists: the nearly eight-meter-long prop, which has undergone extensive restoration, hangs from a ceiling in the museum. In other words, great for looking at, but not so much for touching. To create the fully interactive reproduction of the shark, the KNB EFX team first had to 3D scan the big Bruce to create a faithful 3D model. From there, the model was scaled down and separated into printable pieces.
These pieces, which integrated keys for easy assembly, were 3D printed on Formlabs’ Form 4L, a high-speed resin 3D printer with a large build volume of 353 x 196 x 350 mm. Once printed, these components were assembled and this model was used as the basis to make a mold and running core for casting the “skin” (aka the hollow shell) of the shark. Another core was also made for the mechanical components. Once the cast components were assembled with the internal mechanical structure, the finishing touches could take place. These included painting the shark to resemble the original Bruce and adding 3D printed features, like the fearsome and toothy mouth.
The use of 3D scanning and 3D printing to create the quarter-scale Jaws model allowed KNB EFX not only to create a faithful replica of the iconic Bruce prop, it also enabled the team to achieve this feat on an incredibly tight schedule. When the museum commissioned the piece, they needed it to be ready in less than a month. Not long ago, that would have been an impossible ask. Now, however, KNB EFX is equipped to handle projects of that scale in such a timeframe.
As Greg Nicotero, the founder and owner of KNB EFX, said: “A week later we had a full-size piece. It’s pretty astounding, and the best thing about it is it matches the shark perfectly. There’s no room for error.”
Nicotero and his team use 3D printing regularly in their special effects work, not only in cases like the Jaws exhibition, but also for creating props for television shows, tactile miniatures to show filmmakers, and mold patterns for things like stunt masks. In the case of the latter, the studio uses 3D scanning to capture an actor’s face and then uses a 3D printed model of the face to make a mold for casting a lifelike silicone mask that a stunt double can wear. For actors, this approach is far faster and easier than undergoing face casts.
“This technology has allowed us to improve our work,” Nicotero added. “The amount of detail that we can put into something and print it—and it looks exactly like the model. With 3D printing, every pore, every fang, every little nuance that you put into that sculpture is perfectly reproduced — and that’s game changing for us.”
KNB EFX is not the only special effects studio working in movies and TV that has embraced 3D printing in recent years. In fact, the technology is becoming an indispensable tool in artists’ kits. As we covered recently, 3D printing was used to create a series of lifelike dummies for the final episode of Stranger Things and was also used in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) for the creation of miniature-scale models. These are just a few publicized stories from an industry where 3D printing is increasingly becoming a norm.
