Q. Hi, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hi! I’m Zack Buchman, founder and Creative Director of Furry Puppet Studio, a custom-puppet design studio in SoHo, New York. I moved to New York at twenty, never went to college, and learned almost everything by making things and working alongside people who were better than me at very specific skills. I think that path is part of why the studio runs the way it does: figure it out, bring in the right people, keep building.
Q. What do you do at Furry Puppet Studio?
I’m the Creative Director, so I’m involved from the first sketch through the finished puppet. I help shape the character, work with our artists and fabricators on the technical side, and think early about who will actually perform it. My job is really keeping the character’s personality intact while all the decisions around it, foam, mechanics, costume, get made.
Q. Do you have a puppet or design that you are especially fond of?
It changes, but I keep coming back to the marionettes we built for Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams‘ “WTF” video. Marionettes are unpredictable, and this build tested us the whole way through. We made them in the artists’ likeness, built the costumes, and worked with street performers who each had a very distinct movement style, then had to get the puppets to carry that same energy. I’m still proud of how it came together.
Q. You have worked with some rather large clients (Apple, CNN, Fallout boys) both through Furry Puppet Studio and Uncute. How has it been working with larger brands and networks?
It depends more on the people than the size of the brand. Apple’s team in Japan, where we spent two years on an iPhone campaign, gave us a surprising amount of creative freedom. Sometimes a bigger client means more approval layers but I’ve been lucky to be working mostly with incredibly talented and chill people and I really enjoy that aspect. Some have remained friends long after the project is over.
Q. Puppet making and designing is a rather niche subject. How do you find clients? Is it a struggle?
It is niche, but that’s not a downside. There are no other studios doing the style of work that we are known for, so when someone is looking for that, they usually find their way to us pretty quickly. It is not effortless, every project is different and the work is unpredictable, but distinctive work tends to market itself. If people can see photos of something unusual, they remember it, and that has done more for us than any strategy.
Q. Over at Furry Puppet Studios you make both puppets and mascot suits. As the creative director, do you have a favorite thing to make? Why?
There’s no real favorite between the two. What pulls me in is a character and the feel of it. Puppets and mascot suits do ask for different thinking though. And I’m happy to be doing both. It can be a lot of fun working on a huge costume of a furry monster after you just created a cast of human puppets.
Q. Around how much work goes into a puppet? How long would you say it takes and how many people work on it?
It varies enormously. A simple hand puppet and a complex mechanical character are almost different species, some projects move fast and others take months once you add design development, foam sculpting, mechanisms, costume, and testing. Usually several people touch a single puppet along the way, never just one, though the exact team changes with the project. Even a character that looks simple usually has a lot of hidden decision making behind it.
Q. How do you approach character design? How has that approach changed when you started working with puppets?
I look for the essence first: what do you understand about a character in the first second you see it? Nervous, excited, tired? If that does not land quickly, extra detail will not save it. Puppets can also read differently depending on the angle and there are a lot of ways you can make things interesting.
Q. Where you always planning to work within puppetmaking?
No, I did not have a plan that clean. I tried animation very early on, and I am glad I did, but it never quite felt like home. What I actually enjoyed more was the physical part that puppets bring: to hold a character, move it, and watch someone react to it in real time. Puppetry gave me that and it just felt right.
Q. You are very unique in the sense that you started your own puppet studio, what lead to that decision?
Part of it was practical, I understood pretty quickly I could not do this alone, I needed people with skills I did not have, and starting a studio gave me a way to build that collaboration around the work. The other part is that I wanted it to stay creator driven. A character can go flat if it is designed by committee, and I wanted to create a place where individual artists could actually leave a mark on the character.
Q. Where furry puppet studio makes Puppets, Uncute instead focuses on products like plushies, clothes, and dolls. How does the design processes and production differ between the two? are they made in house?
Furry Puppet Studio is custom work built mostly in house, one puppet for one specific production. Uncute is a toy company that tries to bring our sensibilities into product design. The design has to be strong enough to survive manufacturing at scale. So you cannot rely on subtleties. At the same time there’s so much freedom in designing your own toys.
Q. What is your favorite part of your job?
Watching the character come alive and how people react to it. You spend weeks staring at foam, fabric, and then a performer finally picks it up, breathes with it, and the whole room reacts differently. That moment never gets old, it feels alive and you totally forget about the technical aspect of it. It is also a good reminder that the puppet is not really finished when the build is, the performer finishes it.
Q. How do you look towards the future?
I feel good about it. There is a lot of energy right now around handmade characters, practical effects, stop motion, all the stuff with an actual human fingerprint on it. I would love to do more music videos and get into more original long form character work. I think that puppetry ages really well compared to other technologies, its strength is in its humanity and that never really goes away.
Leave a Reply