Real-World Venture Into Imaginary Worlds : Mike and Sue Earnest’s Huntington Beach company, Dreamation, builds animatronic figures for casinos, theme parks and restaurants.

For Mike Earnest, playtime never ends. He spends much of his workday in an imaginary land of gnomes, dragons and underground caverns.

Earnest, 34, is president of Dreamation, a Huntington Beach company that builds animatronic figures and other artistic creations for theme parks, casinos and resort hotels.

“We get to create something from scratch. It is always something different,” he said. “It comes from some art director’s mind, and we get to produce that, from a small talking toucan to a giant condor. It never gets boring.”

When Disneyland wanted the mysterious Genie to pop his head out of a cave during dinner theater shows that retell the story of Aladdin, it came to Dreamation. And Knott’s Berry Farm commissioned the giant condor as a prop for one of its stage shows.

A walk through Dreamation’s workshop is like touring the back lot of a movie studio. A large green dinosaur costume hangs in a corner. In another room, workers sculpt robotic macaws destined for installation over a bank of slot machines at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. Others paint fiberglass cones that will become part of a surreal cavern in the new MGM Grand Hotel theme park in Las Vegas.

The company’s biggest challenge, Earnest said, is meeting tight deadlines. The MGM Grand, for instance, wants its cavern to be finished in the next few weeks.

“We are doing three extremely large sets and have four weeks to do it,” Earnest said.

When he is not rushed to get jobs finished, Earnest said, he enjoys sitting in on the meetings in which designers conjure up ways to transform ideas into products.

“There is a creative flow, and we get to work with some fine designers,” he said. “One day it’s a novice, and the next day it might be someone with 20 or 30 years of experience.”

Operated by Earnest and his wife, Sue, Dreamation is having its best year yet. Earnest predicts that annual revenue could reach $1 million--almost triple last year’s $350,000 in sales. The company now has 10 employees.

Earnest, a Huntington Beach native, said the business sprang from his interest in motion-picture special effects. He got his first job in the industry in 1981, when he started designing costumes and shows at the Victorville-based research division of Pizza Time Theater, a chain of entertainment-oriented pizzerias that cater to children.

Two years later, he was working as a creator and builder at Alchemy II Inc., a Chatsworth-based maker of talking toys and robotic characters. Among his projects was work on the Teddy Ruxpin line of talking teddy bears that was one of the hit toys of the 1980s.

The Earnests started Dreamation six years ago in Northridge. Sue Earnest, who has a background in art direction, is vice president.

The couple decided to move the company to Huntington Beach because they wanted to bring up their two children there. “I just came home, basically,” he said.

Selling to theme parks, both domestic and foreign, has been the company’s main business, but there have been other clients as well. For instance, Dreamation has crafted talking Rocky and Bullwinkle characters for six units of the San Juan Capistrano-based Bullwinkle’s restaurant chain.

The biggest area of sales growth, though, has been Nevada, where Las Vegas is trying to promote itself as a family destination.

“I perceive Vegas as a city that is actually an amusement park,” Earnest said. “It has no boundaries, and the opportunity is there for the next 20 or 30 years.”

Lacking contacts in Las Vegas or other casino cities, he said, he tried the shoe-leather approach to sell his ideas. “I was just knocking on doors,” he said. “I would come up on Monday and stay through Friday and talk to anybody who’d listen to me.”

One of those who listened was an executive for Harvey’s Resort Hotel-Casino at Lake Tahoe, who would eventually order a new shooting gallery featuring fuzzy forest creatures and menacing space aliens.

Verne Welch, general manager for Harvey’s, said of Earnest’s creation: “His piece just fits right in. He is very creative. I’ve asked him to look at other things he can do for us.”