Animatronic bear suit

The puppeteer

A puppeteer is the animator behind the puppet. With the help of controller like radios or cables, he brings life to the character using all mechanical advantage that the puppet has to offer. This requires skills and proper understanding of human and animal comportmental behavior. He also works very closely with the performer inside the suit to coordinate a move for a particular moment.

Joel Echallier has been a makeup FX artist and a puppeteer for the last 14 years. He has worked on numerous movies and TV commercials animating characters like bears, aliens, cats, dogs,sea creatures and ice cream cones with eyeballs.

The peformer

A performer is a person who is acting the suit. He is usually inside of it. It's the most difficult part of character acting. The suit is usually heavy, uncomfortable and noisy from all the servos running inside of it. The performer should be person in good physical condition and should have experience in body expression and body language. Also the knowledge of character animation is a must. A gorilla should not move like a Chimpanzee. Long hours of practice are required to grasp all the tiny motion details that will make the character believable.

The dresser

A dresser is a qualified suit specialist with knowledge in costume fabrication, sewing techniques, special suit fitting and maintenance. We provide technicians who do only that and more. They can backup every tasks that the puppeteer needs them to take over. The dresser is in charge of the maintenance kit which contains all necessary tools and products to clean and maintain the suit during the rental period.