Inside Furry Puppet Studio: How Doodles Become Puppets for Apple, Nike and Nintendo
Inside Furry Puppet Studio, New York
An interview with Zack Buchman
“The work is the thing. A unique portfolio will open more doors than a large follower count.”
The Studio Behind the Characters
Hidden away in New York, Furry Puppet Studio creates characters that millions of people have seen, often without ever knowing who made them. Founded in 2010 by Creative Director Zack Buchman, the studio has produced custom puppets for Apple, Nike, Nintendo, Casper, television, music videos and original productions through its sister company, Uncute Inc.
Unlike many traditional puppet workshops, Furry Puppet Studio brings together sculptors, engineers, costume makers, designers and performers to create expressive characters for screen. According to the studio, many projects begin not with a polished concept drawing, but with a simple doodle, with the team working together to discover “the essence of the doodle” before transforming it into a finished puppet.
For Holly Likes Puppets, Zack shares his journey into commercial puppetry, his creative process, and his thoughts on making a career in one of the world’s most unusual creative industries.
SEEING FACES EVERYWHERE
You are self taught and never went to college. What first pulled you toward puppets?
I think it started before I knew it was starting. From an early age I was putting things together to make faces, and I still do it. When I am tired I see faces everywhere, in a plug socket, in the front of a car, in fruits and vegetables. I just happen to get genuinely inspired by it.
How Puppetry Became My Career
What first inspired you to pursue puppetry professionally, and were there makers, films or experiences that influenced you?
I do not think there was one clean moment where I decided, this is my profession now. It was more that I kept returning to puppets no matter what else I tried. I moved to New York when I was 20, and the city has a way of showing you that unusual creative jobs can actually exist if you are stubborn enough. Puppetry sat in this place between sculpture, performance, comedy, design and production, and I was really attracted to characters and ways to bring them to life.
The influences were all over the place: Jim Henson, early Sesame Street, stop motion, strange European children’s films, old LucasArts games. What connected them was not style as much as the constraints of the medium. They all forced the creators to find clever ways to create the appearance of life with very little. There is something magical about that.
Inside the SoHo Workshop
Can you take us inside the studio?
It is smaller and calmer than people picture. It started as just me. These days it is a small team here in the SoHo studio, plus a wider group of specialists who come in and out depending on what the project actually needs: sculptors, mechanics, costume people, performers. We have shelves of books including many graphic novels, and puppets sitting around like quiet colleagues. It is a working space. The making is slow and physical. We carve each head by hand from foam, an engineer works out the mechanism, and a costume designer sews the fabric the way you would for a real person, so the character feels like it actually lives in those clothes. Near the very end we set the eyes. That last adjustment can change who the character turns out to be.
One thing that has changed a lot in the workshop over the years is the materials. For a long time nothing on the market matched what we needed, especially once fleece was stretched over a carved foam sculpture and had to hold up on camera, so we manufactured our own and called it dream fleece. These days we source specialty textiles through overseas partners instead.
Do you collaborate internationally or mainly with New York based artists?
The puppets are designed and built here in the New York studio, but the work itself travels. For Apple Japan we worked with Apple's team for two years on an iPhone campaign that was built in New York and shot in Tokyo, we've built a cast of monster puppets for a New Zealand based production, and we just wrapped projects in the UK and Japan. The language of puppetry is universal. It's truly beautiful.
How many different skills go into a single puppet?
Creating a commercial puppet rarely belongs to one person. I lead the studio creatively, but the work depends on specialists with very different skills. There is sculpting, where the character first becomes real in foam. There is mechanical design, because the puppet has to move and not just look good. There is costume design, because the clothing has to behave like clothing on a real body. And there is performance, because a puppet only fully comes to life in the hands of the right puppeteer. Those skills all have to meet in one object.
Take a look at some of the studio's work
Fisherman Puppet
Link: https://www.furrypuppet.com/blog/old-sea-dog/
This is a custom character built around an old fisherman. A good example of character design through sculptural elements and texture. You get a certain feeling even before the puppet starts moving.
Monster Puppets
Link: https://www.furrypuppet.com/blog/monster-puppets/
A cast of mechanized monster puppets we designed for a New Zealand based production. They’re very simple with effective mechanisms.
Desus Nice Puppet
Link: https://www.furrypuppet.com/blog/desus-nice/
The Studio created a custom likeness puppet built for Desus Nice
Anderson Cooper Puppet
Link: https://www.furrypuppet.com/blog/anderson-cooper-and-andy-cohen-custom-puppets-for-cnn/
We were commissioned to create likeness puppets of Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, built for CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, where the two have co-hosted for close to nine years.
Refrigerator monster
Link: https://www.furrypuppet.com/blog/monstrous-appliances/
A talking refrigerator puppet with animatronic eyes, part of a set of appliance puppets we built for the energy company of Philadelphia.
All pieces designed and fabricated by Furry Puppet Studio in New York.
The Puppeteer Is as Important as the Puppet
A lot of our readers here are performers. How do you think about the relationship between the puppet and the person operating it?
In my mind the puppeteer is as important as the puppet. I like to have a performer in mind while I am still designing, and to be in the room for casting and rehearsal early. Sometimes the vibe of the person is so close to the vibe of the puppet that you cannot separate the two. The performer brings the breath and the timing, and it feels inseparable from the puppet.
On one music video we built marionettes of two well known musicians, and the choreographer brought in street performers who each came up over the years with their own way of controlling their marionettes. We rebuilt the insides of the puppets so they could carry that same energy, and watching it come together was a beautiful thing.
Why a Puppet Still Gets to People
Why do you think a puppet can still move people so deeply, even adults?
It seems that we are just wired that way. A cognitive scientist could probably answer this better than I can. We are always hunting for faces and for signs of life, and a puppet gives the brain just enough to latch onto. It is in the room with you, you can see it from every angle and touch it, and at some point you stop seeing the puppeteer entirely. I used to think this only worked on kids, but adults are often the ones who fall hardest.
Learning Without a Map
What would you say to someone who wants to make puppets but has no training and no idea where to begin?
Start, and don’t worry about making it right. Let the first few be bad. The physical part is a wonderful teacher because there is no undo button. You cut the foam, you commit, you work with what you’ve got, and you learn faster than you would on a screen.
Be honest about what you do not know. When you come in with genuine curiosity instead of a performance of confidence, people can appreciate that more and show you things. On formal training: it can be very useful, even though I skipped it. One place I would point people toward is the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. It runs every summer and brings people from all over the world together with master artists. There is a pre-conference for people newer to the field. You learn a lot and you meet the community at the same time, which is probably more valuable than either thing on its own.
Zack Recommends
📚 Books and comics: It’s almost a cliche, but Maus really lives up to its reputation. Also, anything by Roz Chast makes me happy. Michael DeForge has really surprising and clever compositions, poses and character design. I never get tired of it.
🎬 Films and shows that shaped how you see puppets: classic Muppets. Also, I really recommend the old Fleischer Brothers Popeye cartoons. There’s so much experimentation and genius there. Truly inspiring.
🧵 Favourite materials: you can never find me without a Blackwing 602 pencil. I developed an addiction to watercolour a few years ago and I can’t even go to a restaurant any more without a drawing tool on me. It’s really out of control.
Making a Career
What are your top tips for working professionally in the industry?
Keep making things. I know a lot of people are very focused on building an online following, and I understand why, but in my experience it is mostly a distraction. The work is the thing. A unique portfolio will open more doors than a large follower count, and the people hiring you are looking at what you made, not whether your work went viral once. Beyond that: learn to collaborate. Puppetry is not a solo pursuit, and the people who do well in this field tend to be genuinely good to work with. I care much more about someone’s spark than their CV.
How do clients usually find you?
The most honest answer is that the work itself has done a lot of the talking. Distinctive design style, proper credit and a clear portfolio have opened doors.
What makes a portfolio stand out?
What I am really looking for is whether you can tell it is someone’s work even when they are trying very different characters and experimenting with different styles. I really enjoy trying to figure out what the artist’s unique fingerprint is. I also pay attention to finish. For example, I would be embarrassed to put something out that did not meet a certain standard of detail, and what someone chooses to include in a portfolio tells you how they see things.
Recognition
Puppetry is a highly skilled art form, yet many makers and performers in the UK feel it does not always receive the same recognition as other theatre, film or visual arts disciplines. Is that something you have observed in the United States as well?
I think it has been undervalued, but puppets have never really needed permission. People file it under children’s entertainment and it can sometimes feel inadequate, but a puppet does something on a stage or a screen that almost nothing else can, and audiences feel that, and critics too. What I notice lately is a real hunger for things that are handmade and tangible, and that have an authentic emotional connection with the audience.
How can we make the puppetry community stronger?
I think online communities have done more to democratize this than almost anything else. People used to hold their technique pretty close, but now someone can post exactly how they built a mechanism, and a puppet maker on the other side of the world can build on it instead of starting from zero. It has pushed the craft forward faster than most people realize.
Find Zack
People can find the studio's work at Furry Puppet Studio and on Instagram at @furrypuppet. Our original characters and plush toys live at Uncute Inc..
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