--- title: Why Practical Puppets Still Matter in the Age of Digital... description: Zack Buchman, Creative Director at Furry Puppet Studio, shares insights into the studio's puppet-making philosophy and production pipeline. He explains how... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-practical-puppets-still-matter-in-the-age-of-digital-characters-to1ubn0xf twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why Practical Puppets Still Matter in the Age of Digital Characters | daily.dev og:description: Zack Buchman, Creative Director at Furry Puppet Studio, shares insights into the studio's puppet-making philosophy and production pipeline. He explains how... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-practical-puppets-still-matter-in-the-age-of-digital-characters-to1ubn0xf og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/To1UBN0Xf.png og:image:alt: Why Practical Puppets Still Matter in the Age of Digital Characters og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why Practical Puppets Still Matter in the Age of Digital Characters **[80 LEVEL](https://daily.dev/sources/80lv)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Zack Buchman, Creative Director at Furry Puppet Studio, shares insights into the studio's puppet-making philosophy and production pipeline. He explains how every character begins with loose sketching and foam sculpting before moving through material testing, eye placement, and performance testing. The interview covers how design requirements shift depending on the medium — close-up camera work demands precise finishing, while live mascots need durability and broad readability. Buchman advocates for minimal mechanics, letting performance carry the character, and sees practical puppets and CG as complementary rather than competing. He advises aspiring creature designers to build early and often, as physical construction reveals what drawings cannot. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [CGI Motion Capture With Only A Camera](https://daily.dev/posts/cgi-motion-capture-with-only-a-camera-5ewpud8rk) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Lessons from Defunctland's video on Disney's 'Living Characters'](https://daily.dev/posts/lessons-from-defunctland-s-video-on-disney-s-living-characters--58nxwgj4t) · Game Developer · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [An In-Depth Interview With The Creative Team at Sideshow](https://daily.dev/posts/an-in-depth-interview-with-the-creative-team-at-sideshow-6xrfepnpv) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Experimenting with Houdini to Groom a Dog in a Ghost Costume](https://daily.dev/posts/experimenting-with-houdini-to-groom-a-dog-in-a-ghost-costume-ig0odvecb) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Capsule Studio on Animating Content like Trailers or VR Experiences](https://daily.dev/posts/capsule-studio-on-animating-content-like-trailers-or-vr-experiences-tjgkdmcr5) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-design](https://daily.dev/tags/game-design) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-practical-puppets-still-matter-in-the-age-of-digital-characters-to1ubn0xf) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why Practical Puppets Still Matter in the Age of Digital Characters","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-practical-puppets-still-matter-in-the-age-of-digital-characters-to1ubn0xf","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-practical-puppets-still-matter-in-the-age-of-digital-characters-to1ubn0xf"},"datePublished":"2026-07-29T18:28:30.892Z","dateModified":"2026-07-29T18:34:41.093Z","description":"Zack Buchman, Creative Director at Furry Puppet Studio, shares insights into the studio's puppet-making philosophy and production pipeline. 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