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Jim Henson's Creature Shop

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Jim Henson's Creature Shop logo
Jim Henson's Creature Shop logo

Jim Henson's Creature Shop is a company founded in 1979 by puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets.

It is a large creature-building workshop that creates several special puppet and animatronic creatures and characters for a large number of other films and series. The company is well-known for its more fantastical creations, the aliens in Farscape, but it also does life-like replications of real animals, especially when unusual animal performances are required. The company was responsible for the talking animals in Eddie Murphy's Doctor Dolittle, and won two Academy Awards for the life-like animals in the film Babe. They are also responsible for bringing the Ninja Turtles to life in the 1990 live-action film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and its sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. They also created the costumes for the hit show Dinosaurs.

Despite assumptions to the contrary, Jim Henson's Creature Shop wan not responsible for any of the non-human characters in the Star Wars series. The Star Wars creatures were created in-house at Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas' special effects shop. Henson and Lucas did however collaborate on the '80s cult classic Labyrinth (film).

The company is based out of Hollywood, California, United States and previously Camden Town in London, United Kingdom where they still maintain some facilities.