In our minds this is the be-all-end-all of all puppets! We joke around the studio that Mike ‘has scale issues’ because he loves to make BIG puppets so what better, bigger character to give him than the Governator himself!

The only direction that was given at the start of this scene was to make sure the character felt like a puppet version of every other collaged illustration we’d done of Ahnuld – half naked, insanely buff and packin’ heat! Here are some initial designs that Alex and Justin turned out. The one on the end is what Mike ultimately based his sculpt on…

Once he had something to sink his teeth into, Mike was off to the races with glue gun in hand. Here’s a glimpse at the evolution of a ROCKIN’ puppet…

Finally, here’s a clip of the Swazzle-masters in action. Notice that the arms of the puppet aren’t even attached. This gave the puppeteers the ability to do whatever they wanted but when filmed at the right angle it looks like one unified character. That, plus the nerf gun we spray-painted black was pretty darn heavy!