Full Body Puppeteering at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop

Adam Savage, who previously learned about straight-arm puppeteering while visiting the legendary Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in Burbank, California, took the opportunity to learn more about full-body puppeteering from creative supervisor Peter Brooke and performer Morgana Ignis.

At Jim Henson’s Creature shop, creative supervisor Peter Brooke takes Adam through the designing and building of Junior Gorg from Fraggle Rock, while performer Morgana Ignis demonstrates how to bring the beloved character to life!

Adam SavageFull Body Puppeteering

Brooke explained how the costumes are designed to be as comfortable as possible for the performers, while Ignis put on the costume for the Fraggle Rock character Junior Gorg, explaining how it felt throughout the dressing process. Savage also spoke with the puppeteer who provides Junior’s voice, mouth, and eye movement through a separate jaw mechanism.

I’m using two servos and I’ve copied the mechanism inside the head to the controller so these two potentiometers are controlling those two servos so all that mouth movement is coming from just two servos and how they how they work together in the head.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.