Furry Puppet Studio

Have you heard of ‘Grumpy Cat’? ” asks Zack Buchman, Founder and Creative Director of Furry Puppet Studio, as he strolls through his Brooklyn studio, stopping to lift a frowning feline puppet, its bright blue eyes fixed in a state of perpetual annoyance, into the air.

He is referring, of course, to the celebrity cat whose pointed expression of disgust has inspired everything from television interviews to countless memes. Grumpy Cat reappears here now in the only official version of her puppet form, judgmental scowl fully intact.

Buchman, a former animator who left home and moved to New York City at a young age, has a pretty unorthodox background for a creative director who’s at the helm of his own business. “Actually, I never ended up going to college,” he says. “But I think that it ended up giving me this outsider perspective and an unusual outlook. Which is why our work is so different.”

Indeed, it seems that Buchman’s unique perspective has a lot to do with the attention that Furry Puppet Studio is getting: he and his team have together conceptualized and fabricated custom puppets for a wide variety of productions, from TV shows to music videos featuring some unexpected guest stars, such as Jon Hamm and Michelle Obama.

Buchman, as he tells it, draws artistic inspiration from the pixelated computer games he was exposed to in his childhood and “naturally, Jim Henson’s early work.” He believes wholeheartedly in the power of smart character design and is “a big fan of keeping things simple.”

More info here: https://www.animationforadults.com/2024/05/art-chooses-you-conversation-with-zack.html

https://craftindustryalliance.org/zack-buchman-makes-puppets-that-delight/