Along with Disney cartoons & movies, I was raised on the Muppets. Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock & Muppet Babies were some of the first shows I ever watched on television growing up. Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas has been a must-watch yearly tradition for my older sister & me every holiday season & John Denver with the Muppets has always been near the top of my music library. The Muppets first introduced me to many great artists, comedians, musicians & actors through The Muppet Show & the Muppet movies & they still entertain me to this very day. In many ways, the Muppets have been a bigger inspiration to me than any cartoon character.
To me, Jim Henson is the person I idolize the most. He was a very unique individual, who had an incredible imagination, appealing personality & more creativity & talent in his bare hands than most people have in their entire body. Of course he had numerous equally creative & talented people at his side (Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, & countless others), but nobody had the spirit & tenacity that Henson did. He left the world far too soon.
Being a puppeteer has been a secret dream of mine for many years, & until now I haven't been able to quench my thirst for it. A few months back, I decided it was finally time to make my dream a reality.
For weeks I scanned the web scanning, researching & inquiring numerous companies & studios who can seamlessly create a puppet based on my own specifications. After looking over numerous sites & asking questions through email with countless dead-ends, I finally came to the right place:
Furry Puppet Inc. . I immediately contacted Zack Bouchman from Furry Puppet, getting a gratifying reply back from him. After meeting with him & discussing specific quirks & important factors in the design of the puppet, we struck a deal!
Before I made contact with Zack, I thought hard on who to translate from 2D to the third-dimension. I finally decided that Cannibal Chicken would be the best choice because I thought he'd be the most difficult to transform into 3D & fabricate in puppet form. Get the hardest out of the way first, right?
I sent Zack a bunch of sketches & finished drawings showing him what Cannibal Chicken would look like from all sides as well as his proportions, colors, specific quirks & details in his design (his one green eye, his shirt, etc.). Here's some of the drawings I sent him:
Zack took these reference drawings & started working...
A few weeks later, Zack sent me some work-in-progress pictures of the puppet. At that point, the puppet was only sculpted foam. Although it was hard to visualize how the puppet would finally look, I was shocked & excited at how far the project had progressed & how Cannibal Chicken looked in three dimensions:
After this point, the puppet's pieces were sewn together, had it's fabric & fur dyed the appropriate colors & sewed on, had bendable & flexible wires put into the fingers & tail, had them grafted to the body & had arm rods attatched.
After over a month of work, Cannibal Chicken was finally complete:
I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw these pictures. I practically fell outta my chair! He came out a million times better than I could possibly imagine!
I'd like to thank Zack Bouchman & Maria Gurevich (chief fabricator) from Furry Puppet for their wonderful work & for letting me have permission to post the work-in-progress pictures. They're both extremely amazing & talented artists! Check out their official site & the Furry Puppet Blog to see their work & (if you desire) order a custom puppet of your very own from them. I highly recommend them!
Now that the first half of my puppeteering goal is complete, it's time for Phase #2! I'll try to post video(s) of Cannibal Chicken in the near future to see if I got what it takes. 'Til then, I'll be warming up & getting used to handling the puppet.
As you can probably tell, I'm very satisfied indeed.
