Furry Puppet Studio Interview

I recently had the opportunity to ask some questions of Zack Buchman, the Creative Director at Furry Puppet Studio. Their puppets are amazing! Here’s a little bit more about them and the puppets they create. ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

All photos belong to Furry Puppet Studios and are used with their permission.

Q. Tell me a little bit about Furry Puppet Studio.

A. Furry Puppet Studio, a custom-puppet design studio is based in SoHo, New York. We design and build puppets, creatures, and mascots for TV, advertising, music videos, and live shows, and every one starts as a hand carved foam sculpture, with the mechanisms engineered in house. I’m the founder and Creative Director.

Q. I know you have multiple puppet artists mentioned on your website and I’m curious how that works. Does everyone work there full-time or part-time? Is it all at one location or do some artists work at separate studios?

A. We’re a small in house team, and most of the work happens together in our SoHo studio. We do have a core group of artists that help us maintain our own unique “house style”. When a build calls for a specific skill, we bring in specialists for that project. Every puppet is different, so the team around it changes too.

Q. Every maker has that thing they excel at. What would you say is your specialty? What sets Furry Puppet Studio apart from other puppet makers?

A. I think our specialty is character design. We spend most of our energy on finding the essence of a character and keeping it alive through the build. A lot of that lives in the composition and the shapes, and the eyes. Move an eye a few millimeters and the vibe of the whole puppet changes. Those tiny decisions are where the work really happens, and I think that’s what people recognize in our puppets.

Q. Tell us about your most challenging puppet build. How do you overcome creative challenges that pop up in your studio?

A. The WTF marionettes for Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams are the build I think of first. Marionettes are unforgiving, they genuinely fight you, and we were building for street performers with very distinct movement styles, which we had to reverse engineer into the rigging. It was such an interesting process. We all learned a lot and I think that the final result speaks for itself.

Q. You make puppets for TV, film and stage. Is your process different depending on where the puppet will be used?

A. It changes a lot with distance, and how long the puppet has to hold up. For CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, we built likeness puppets of Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen that sit right next to the real people on live television, so the finishing has to be exact. Frankie Focus, the mascot we built for New York State, is closer to the opposite problem: something that has to read clearly from across a room and survive being worn for hours.

Q. If someone wants to have a custom puppet made, what is the process for that? How do they share their ideas so you can build it from fleece and fur?

A. It usually starts loose, a feeling more than a blueprint. Sometimes the first instinct is already the answer. For the Bitcoin mascot we built for a Jack Dorsey project, the very first sketch I did in a meeting ended up being the final design. From there, we sketch a few directions, carve a rough foam mock up, and build it out in fur and fabric once a direction feels right. People don’t need finished art, just a clear sense of the character’s personality.

Q. And now for the question that everyone is always afraid to ask…What does it cost to have a custom puppet from Furry Puppet Studio?

A. That is honestly a really difficult one to answer, and for a reason. Everything we do is completely custom, and we like to be able to go all the way with the creative development. It all depends on the project: the character, the mechanics, the timeline. It does tend to be more expensive than animation.

I didn’t want to take up too much of Zack’s time, since I know he’s busy building puppets. But even in that short Q&A, it was interesting to hear his thoughts and their approach to building professional puppets. Thanks for the interview Zack!

And if you’re looking for a custom puppet build, be sure to contact Furry Puppet Studio and tell them all about YOUR dream puppet project. (‾◡◝)

All photos belong to Furry Puppet Studios and are used with their permission.