chase the light

Liza got back in town Monday night! She’ll be here for a few months and off we went tonight to the Jim Henson Studios, formerly A&M Records, formerly formerly Charlie Chaplin’s studios.

Jim Henson’s Creature Shop was doing a demo of their technology and also held an open house. They did some motion capture demos along side of puppeteering facial animation. Fun stuff. After that we walked around the studio lot and saw some puppets from The Dark Crystal, the Muppet Show, and various creatures who all looked slightly familiar. We went into the workshop in back and they had a rack of muppets that was hilarious looking. All colorful but not animated at all. No spark of life in them at all. Also we saw one of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. After a bit of research Liza found out he was SkekOk the Scroll-Keeper.

We even saw Charlie Chaplin’s footprints and signature that he put in some cement outside one the the studios. The cool thing is that there aren’t really public tours of the studio so it was nice to have a look behind the gates.

Then there was that little ditty back in 1985 called “We are the World” that was filmed and recorded at the studios when it was A&M Records. Fun stuff!

Ain’t she cute with her muppet pals?