I interviewed founder and Creative Director Zack Buchman about Puppets and the Furry Puppet Studio.
Furry Puppet Studio is a custom puppet design studio tucked away in SoHo, New York. They have built custom puppets for clients including Apple, Nike, Casper, and Nintendo, produced puppets for music videos and television.
How did you get into this? Did you choose puppetry or did it choose you?
It may sound like a cliche but it chose me. I’ve tried to explain it to people over the years, and that’s the realest answer I have.
I tried animation early on and it didn’t last. I remember asking myself what it was I actually wanted, and what I kept coming back to was puppets. Being able to feel a character and bring it to life so organically.
I moved to New York when I was twenty and never went to college. People sometimes ask me about that. I think I missed out on a lot, genuinely.
But not having a rulebook to check myself against probably gave me something too. There was no internal voice telling me I was doing it wrong, because I’d never been told what right was supposed to look like. I was just following my obsessions.
Why do puppets still get to people? Even adults, even now?
This is the thing I care most about, so I’ll give you an example.
A friend of mine had a TV show years ago called Nanalan. He brought his grandmother to the set one day, and she sat there watching one of the puppet characters perform.
At some point she just started tearing up, and she leaned over and gave the puppet a kiss. She was not acting. She knew perfectly well there was a person operating it. None of that mattered. The emotions were real.
That’s the suspension of disbelief working at its fullest. A puppet exists in the room with you. You can look at it from any angle, hear it, reach out and touch it if you’re close enough. Something in the brain clicks over, and it becomes a living thing.
People are ignoring the puppeteer even when they’re right in front of them. I think we tend to assume this only works on kids, but if you could see how adults actually react to puppets you’d be surprised. It’s almost embarrassing.
Who tends to hire a custom puppet studio? What kinds of projects come in?
The range is one of my favorite things about this work. I’ve built puppets for tech companies, fashion brands, musicians, television, advertising, government campaigns, and everywhere in between.
Apple had us working with their team in Japan for two years. We built a marionette of Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams for a music video, we had to teach them to twerk.
A likeness puppet of Andy Cohen for CNN, and most recently Frankie Focus, the mascot for New York State’s phone-free schools initiative, who ended up on Jimmy Kimmel being operated by Matt Damon(!).
I sometimes say, what other job is going to connect you to so many remarkable humans and at so many fields? I’m genuinely thankful for it.
How is a custom puppet made? What are the steps?
It starts with a conversation. A client rarely arrives with a finished idea. My job at the start is to ask the questions other people are embarrassed to ask, and try to come up with interesting ideas.
Then we sketch, and the foam carving begins. I think what surprises most people is how physical and tactile the whole thing is.
We carve each puppet head by hand from upholstery foam. An engineer works out the internal mechanism. A costume designer patterns and constructs the fabric, just like a real garment. It’s genuinely skilled craft at every step, and every step is largely invisible to the person watching the finished character. But you feel it.
What would you tell a young artist who wants to get into puppet making?
Find people who are generous with what they know, and be generous back. I can’t say that strongly enough. There’s nothing I care about more than people and when you are surrounded by generosity of spirit, everything is better.
