History

Founded in 1985, The Creature Shop has earned a reputation for consistent, award winning performance and visual effects achievements. The company has attracted some of the world's finest talent in the areas of animatronics, puppetry and computer graphics for filmmaking, television, and live performances.

The original Creature Shop was started by Jim Henson as his permanent workshop in London. Keeping a full-time staff of builders that understood Jim's visions and philosophies allowed for growth of the legacy and quality of work that audiences have grown to love.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop quickly grew to become the standard in puppetry and animatronics that it is today as releases like "The Storyteller" and "The Dark Crystal" were so warmly received among sci-fi and fantasy audiences. Outside clients began to commission the team to bring their character visions to life. Projects like "Alice in Wonderland", "The Witches" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" quickly brought international acclaim to the Creature Shop. The shop expanded in the early 90's to help absorb the workload brought on by Dinosaurs, the hit television series produced by The Jim Henson Company. The show required a full cast of animatronic characters built by the Creature Shop that could be controlled by a proprietary performance control system that would become the Oscar-winning Henson Performance Control System. This groundbreaking series opened up the pathway to other animatronic projects such as "The Flinstones", "The Never-Ending Story", "The Adventures of Pinocchio", the live-action version of Disney's "101 Dalmations", and "Babe", for with the Creature Shop received an Academy Award.

Always a leader in cutting edge technology and continuously upholding the values of its originator, Jim Henson's Creature Shop strives to be on the forefront of advancement. Today, the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio has evolved to become a means of performing CG animated characters in real time on our proprietary viewer. Puppeteers create character voices and facial expressions through pre-programmed mechanisms controlled by an animatronic hand rig. Concurrently, body performers outfitted in motion capture suits add the full body movements and activity of the same character. All of this is happening as each performer is watching their characters come to life in real-time, allowing them the ability to modify their performance to best suit the needs of the production.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop, with locations in Los Angeles and New York continues to produce a caliber of work that is unmatched in quality, design, functionality, and professionalism. Our dedicated and incredibly skilled team possesses a level of creativity with unlimited possibilities.