The Fantastic Creations of Doug Haffner

Note: Doug has recently suffered a stroke with complications due to COVID-19. He hasn’t been able to work for the last year during his recovery and he’s in danger of losing his shop. Please donate to his GoFundme if you can. He’s been a longtime CarveWright user and has even been a speaker at our CarveWright Conferences. Anything helps. Thank you.

Doug Haffner began making signs and props in his garage shop just for fun, and fun they are. As it turns out, he was really good at it and people began wanting to give him money for his enjoyment. His part-time play quickly turned it into a full-time business, and Haffner’s Fantastic Creations was born.

Doug took to the CarveWright quickly and with a lot of enthusiasm. His artistic talent (he is a gifted painter) and his knowledge of computers made CNC tech second nature to him. Having a fantastical aesthetic style and an adventurous nature led him to explore many different materials while pushing the size of projects he could make. 

Carving movie posters was one of his first endeavors. Using photoshop and CarveWright’s import image tool, he found ways to give shape to 2 dimensional posters. Then, he’d finish them with his excellent painting skills to make some really awesome pieces. CarveWright’s CEO has several of these in his home now!

The posters led to a project with ABC’s hit TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition where he did a series of Star Wars carvings including the first 3 movie posters. (see Star Wars poster article for more pictures)

Doug’s love of classic horror and science fiction has led him in some pretty amazing directions. Like the time he decided he needed a monster arcade machine complete with green glowing lithophanes.

Or that time he wanted a sign for his business as a rocket ship.

Or that other time Doug built a giant 3 legged robot for an online steampunk contest.

Mostly though, Doug carves signs and paints beautiful murals for customers all over. See more of Doug’s work at ​​https://www.facebook.com/haffnersfantasticcreations/