What is a puppet design studio?
We're Furry Puppet Studio, a custom-puppet design studio in SoHo, New York. I'm the founder and Creative Director. We design and build custom puppets, creatures, mascots, and marionettes for television, advertising, music videos, and almost everything happens in-house, the foam carving, the mechanisms, the costumes. A lot of people assume this kind of work is mostly digital these days. It isn't. Every puppet we make starts as a block of foam that somebody carves by hand.
How did you get into puppetry?
I've been obsessed with puppets since I was a little kid watching Sesame Street. I actually tried animation first, but it didn't stick. I wanted to be able to touch the character, not just draw it frame by frame. I never went to college. That wasn't really a choice so much as a circumstance, and I do think I missed out on some things. But it also gave me an outsider's perspective, and it pushed me to find people who were generous enough to teach me what I didn't know.
Could you share some of the artists who inspire you and your coworkers at Furry Puppet Studio?
Jim Henson is the obvious one, but I mean that honestly. Early LucasArts games really shaped how I think about a face, Sam & Max Hit the Road especially, where the graphics were so limited that a single pixel had to decide whether it read as an eye or a nose. Beyond that, our team pulls from all over: comics, film, fashion, whatever's caught someone's eye that week.
What was one of the more challenging projects you have tackled at Furry Puppet Studio?
Building marionettes of Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams for their "WTF" music video. Marionettes are hard. They don't move the way you'd expect, and every string has to be reverse-engineered into a personality. We had street performers with very distinct movement styles operating them, so the puppets basically had to be built around how those specific artists already moved. It was completely outside my comfort zone, and I'm still proud of how it came together.
If you were stranded on a deserted island, what is the one art supply you'd need to keep creating puppets?
A Blackwing 602 pencil. This is the only pencil I've been using since 2010 and I pretty much always have one on me. For no practical reason. It's my comfort object.
What's the best way for a young artist to get started on their journey into puppetry?Start now, and start cheap. You don't need special materials. Whatever you've already got around the house can be your first puppet. Let the early ones be bad and fun. That's part of learning how the material behaves. And find people around you who know things you don't, and are generous about teaching you. Be generous back once you're the one who knows something.
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