Jim Henson's Monster Dance

Jim Henson's Monster Dance is out today on Amazon Kids+. It's a series of ten three-minute CGI shorts for preschoolers, featuring three colorful monsters named Teeny, Toots, and Razzle Dazzle who dance their feelings out. The show's character designs were inspired by Jim Henson's famous monster doodles, and were brought to life using the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio.

Here's how the Jim Henson Company describes the series:

In Jim Henson’s Monster Dance, all kids are invited to let their inner monster out on the dance floor where they can express big emotions through physical movements. Carrying on Jim Henson’s legacy of creating loveable monsters, the shorts feature a new cast of colorful animated monsters inspired by his original designs that are brought to life by the award-winning Henson Digital Puppetry Studio.

Monster Dance was created by John Tartaglia, who previously created Henson's Splash and Bubbles digital puppetry series. Puppeteers on the series include Victor Yerrid, Allan Trautman and Aymee Garcia. Choreography for the series was created by the Emmy award winning Mandy Moore.

Jim Henson's Monster Dance is currently streaming on Amazon Kids+ in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.

 

Inside the Digital Puppetry of Jim Henson’s Puppet Up!

The Henson Digital Puppetry Studio is a digital puppetry platform the Jim Henson Company has been building for decades, with roots that go back to Waldo C. Graphic in the late 1980s. The technology has come a long way since then, and in recent years has become good enough that the Jim Henson Company regularly uses it in Puppet Up!, their touring live improvised puppet comedy show.

In this video from Tested, Henson puppeteers Sarah Oh and Dan Garza show host Adam Savage how they use their puppeteering and improv skills to blend a digital character seamlessly - and hilariously - with a group of practical puppets in a single performance before a live audience. 

What makes this so impressive, of course, isn’t just the technology. It’s that Oh and Garza are skilled puppeteers doing what skilled puppeteers have always done: listening, reacting, finding the joke, and creating the illusion of life where it doesn't actually exist at all.

The octopus may be digital, but the performance is remarkable because it's unmistakably human.

If you want to see the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio in action yourself, Puppet Up! will be playing the Montalbán Theatre in Los Angeles this summer. Visit PuppetUp.com for upcoming tour dates and full details.

How Waldo Worked

Take a look at the origins of digital puppetry technology with this clip from Secrets of the Muppets, in which Jim Henson explains how Waldo C. Graphic - one of the very first digital puppetry characters - was created and performed. 

.