WMarianne Appel was an American artist and a member of the Woodstock artists colony. She was also known under the professional name of Marianne Harms as a puppet designer. She painted murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Fine Arts Section during the Great Depression and was selected for exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and has works in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She was married to Austin Mecklem from 1936 to his death in 1951, but kept her maiden name professionally until after her second marriage to Carl Harms in 1960, after which she went by Marianne Harms. Harms became an illustrator and puppet designer, learning her craft working with Bil Baird and then working as a designer and fabricator for Jim Henson on the pilot for The Muppets and numerous of his television specials and movies.
WEnrico Baj was an Italian artist and writer on art. Many of his works show an obsession with nuclear war. He created prints, sculptures but especially collage. He was close to the surrealist and dada movements, and was later associated with CoBrA. As an author he has been described as a leading promoter of the avant-garde. He worked with Umberto Eco among other collaborators. He had a long interest in the pseudo-philosophy 'pataphysics.
WBohdan Butenko was a Polish cartoonist, illustrator, comic book writer and artist, as well as puppet designer.
WGaspare Canino was an Italian artist and one of the last puppetmasters of the Canino family, working in Alcamo in the province of Trapani; his activity, interrupted in 1970, has been resumed in 1990 by Salvatore Oliveri, his grandson.
WMaría Dolores Velázquez Rivas, better known as "Lola" Cueto was a Mexican painter, printmaker, puppet designer and puppeteer. She is best known for her work in children’s theater, creating sets, puppets and theatre companies performing pieces for educational purposes. Cueto took her last name from husband Germán Cueto, which whom she had two daughters, one of which is noted playwright and puppeteer Mireya Cueto. Most of Cueto’s artistic interest was related to Mexican handcrafts and folk art, either creating paintings about it or creating traditional works such as tapestries, papel picado and traditional Mexican toys.
WJeffrey Douglas Dunham is an American ventriloquist, stand-up comedian and actor who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show and Sonny With a Chance. He has six specials that run on Comedy Central: Arguing with Myself, Spark of Insanity, Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special, Controlled Chaos, Minding the Monsters, and All Over the Map. Dunham also starred in The Jeff Dunham Show, a series on the network in 2009.
WBessie Alexander Ficklen was an American poet and artist. Her essay on "Dream Poetry", appeared in one of the leading magazines of the 19th-century and attracted much attention. She wrote more for pleasure than for any monetary gain. She was also quite as clever with drawing-pencils as with her pen, and from time to time, for private circulation, published little books of rhyme—simple, jesting doggerel—written and illustrated by her own hand. She was a hand puppeteer, creating them for several decades and writing a book on the subject.
WJanie Geiser is an American artist and experimental filmmaker. Her notable works include The Fourth Watch, Terrace 49, The Red Book, The Secret Story, Colors, Immer Zu, Lost Motion, and Clouded Sulphur.
WJim Henson's Creature Shop is a special/visual effects company founded in 1979 by puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets. The company is based out of Burbank, California, United States.
WKihachirō Kawamoto was a Japanese puppet designer and maker, independent film director, screenwriter and animator and president of the Japan Animation Association from 1989, succeeding founder Osamu Tezuka, until his own death. He is best-remembered in Japan as designer of the puppets for the long-running NHK live action television series of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the early 1980s and The Tale of the Heike in the 1990s but better-known internationally for his own animated short films, the majority of which are model animation but which also include the cutout animation Tabi and Shijin no Shōgai and mixed media, French-language Farce anthropo-cynique.
WElizaveta Sergeyevna Kruglikova was a Russian-Soviet painter, etcher, silhouettist and monotypist.
WSophia Michahelles is one of the two chief artists and puppeteers of Processional Arts Workshop, makers of pageant puppets and other processional art in upstate New York. She works closely with co-director Alex Kahn. The couple's work, under the informal moniker "Superior Concept Monsters" has been commissioned each year since 1998 to lead New York's Village Halloween Parade, the largest puppet parade and street-pageant of its kind in the United States, drawing two million spectators.
WPuppet Heap, LLC is a puppet design, fabrication and production company based in Hoboken, New Jersey. The company was founded by artist and designer Paul Andrejco, who previously worked for The Jim Henson Company from 1992 to 2001 and designed the characters for Bear in the Big Blue House that aired on the Disney Channel. In 2004, Andrejco opened Puppet Heap at its current location in Hoboken. The company's studio has a workshop, woodshop, casting facilities, and a small production and photography studio.
WDavid Strassman is an American ventriloquist, stand-up comedian, actor, voice artist, and comedian. He is best known for his ventriloquism act with Chuck Wood and Ted E. Bare.
WBradford Cody "Brad" Williams was an American puppeteer, designer and teacher. He died from injuries sustained in a car accident at the age of 42.
WIlana Yahav is a sand animation artist from Israel. She has performed in front of live audiences, in video clips and in advertisements.
WNikolai Zykov is a Soviet and Russian actor, director, artist, designer, puppet-maker, and master puppeteer.