Introduction

Puppet Services is a company specializing in the design and manufacturing of professional puppets for stage and television. We can design your playmate, the character of a series, or make the mascot of your business alive. We create custom puppets to answer each of your expectations. Make your desires a reality and surprise your audience!

The founder of Puppet Services, Mehdi Garrigues, holds a Masters in Marketing and an audiovisual marketing specialization received at the National Audiovisual Institute (INA). It's on the side of his university career that he developed his passion for puppetry. As a child, he realized that the creatures of Jim Henson (The Muppets), Yves Brunier (L'île aux enfants) and Alain Duverne (les Guignols, le Bebête Show, les Minikeums) were impossible to obtain. So he decided to make them himself and he learned the techniques used to design the characters. The hours spent with Alain Duverne in his studio allowed him to develop his craft and to meet different puppeteers.

After working in the fields of TV, cinema and theater, Mehdi decided to focus on the creation and manufacture of professional puppets, founding Puppet Services in 2013. All our puppets are handmade in France, and we can also offer our services in manipulation for your shootings. You will discover some of our productions on our Youtube channel, and to see them in motion, why don't you let Nigel present you our company ? It's here!

Manufacturing

We provide two main types of puppets:

Arm Rod Puppets

This type of puppet traditionally requires a puppeteer. The hands of the character are connected to rigid rods for handling. You can easily remove and replace the rods as needed. An armature is also present to position the fingers of the puppet.
Examples of Arm Rod Puppet: Kermit The Frog (The Muppets), Elmo (Sesame Street), Rod (Avenue Q)

Live Hands Puppets

This type of puppet traditionally requires two puppeteers. A person slips his arms into the character's head and another slides his hands into the arms of the puppet. One puppeteer is necessary in the case where one of the character's arms is padded.
Examples of Live Hands Puppet: Alf, Tatayet, Trekky Monster (Avenue Q)

Every type of puppet (arm rod puppet / live puppet hands) can be designed in two ways:
- « Full Body »: the character is complete (head + torso + legs). This type of puppet is mainly used on stage
- « Half Body »: only the top half of the character is made (head + torso). This type of puppet is used primarily in television.

For more information about the warranty, the manufacturing timeline or legal aspects, please click on the "+" below.

Warranty

If a fault occurs in the normal use of the puppet during the 3 months of purchase, we will be fixing it for free. Shipping costs are not included in the warranty.

Rights and exclusivity

When creating a character specifically for you Puppet Services offers two options:

- For the exclusive rights to the puppet, the minimum price is €4500 and will vary depending on the complexity of the puppet. You will be the only owner of the character and we promise not to (re) produce the puppet for anyone but you. You own the rights for stage and television. The use of the image of the puppet for potential derived products is subject to conditions. For more information please contact us.

- The non-exclusive rights to the puppet: The minimum price is €1500 and then varies according to the complexity of the character. The first puppet (including exploitation rights for the stage and television) is yours but we reserve the right to incorporate this new model in our range.

Manufacturing timeline

Our puppets are all handmade in France and their production time is variable depending on our business and the puppet in question. For a new puppet, 5-6 weeks on average are needed. For a puppet from the range, 2 to 3 weeks on average.

Beware

The puppets are all hand-crafted. Each one of them is carefully made: the heads are hand sewn in order to make the seams as unobtrusive as possible, the eyes are carefully positioned to look as expressive as possible, and a space in the head is specifically designed so that the hand of the puppeteer is secured and handling facilitated. As our puppets are handmade, each one of them has its own characteristics making it unique. There may therefore be slight differences, very small, on puppets of the same character. Moreover clothes shown on the pictures are for illustrative purposes, because they may not be available when the character is ordered. We will provide comparable garments.
When ordering two identical puppets or more, for the most identical puppets possible, it is best to order them at the same time.

For even more information, do not hesitate to contact us!

Portfolio

Here are some of our productions.
We are currently working on new projects,
and we can't wait to share them with you here!

JEFF PANACLOC AND JEAN-MARC

Design and production of all the puppets for ventriloquist-comic Jeff Panacloc, including the famous orange monkey Jean-Marc. With their show "Jeff Panacloc loses control", they made 500,000 spectators laugh throughout the world. Check out their website by clicking here!

Client: Artistic Records / Jeff Panacloc
Images courtesy of Artistic Records and Jeff Panacloc
JEFF PANACLOC COUNTER-ATTACKS

Jeff and Jean-Marc continue to break records by filling Zeniths and mythical venues such as the Olympia or the Théâtre des Variétés! After the success of the first show Jeff and Jean-Marc are back for a second show that combines humour and songs with a production by Nicolas Nebot. So I once again directed Jean-Marc for this show, but I also created the puppets of Jacky, the alcoholic technician, and Nabilouch, Jean-Marc's girlfriend. The show includes a total of 6 puppets that I made with the help of Jean-Louis Veron and Michel Ploix/Charles Hartenstein.

Client: Artistic Records / Jeff Panacloc
JAMEL COMEDY KIDS

Design, production and manipulation of Michel, the puppet who co-hosts with Jamel Debbouze "Jamel Comedy Kids" on Canal + (french television).

Client: Kissman Production
Design and production: Mehdi Garrigues
DISNEYLAND PARIS

Manufacture of a puppet for Disneyland Paris. You can see Miss Diamond Lill perform daily at the Lucky Nugget Saloon in Disneyland, or by clicking here!

Client : Moving Puppet/ Disneyland Paris
Character design : Disneyland Paris
Art Direction: Jerome Clauss
Manufacturing : Mehdi Garrigues
BANANA SIM ADVERTISING

Design, manufacturing and manipulation of the puppet for the "Banana Sim" ad for the Belgian telecom provider Join. Watch the ad here!

Client: Arizona Film/ Agence Vous
LE CAS PUCINE

Capucine is a talented young ventriloquist who has created a universe that mixes comedy and poetry. On her Youtube channel, she intelligently tackles social issues that are difficult to deal with. Nearly 80,000 people follow her on her Facebook page « Le cas Pucine », and her videos have between 70,000 and nearly 3 million views for her record. I had the pleasure of completely redesigning her character of Eliott so that she could have a puppet that would allow her to play a wide range of emotions. Capucine and Eliott perform more and more on stage to the delight of their fans !

Client: Le Cas Pucine
LIKE ME

Like Me is a French series broadcast on Disney XD that explores the lifelike daily life of a 15-year-old youtuber, Like: his inspirations, his friends and his family, all with a host of guests. The director-producer Romuald Boulanger asked me for an episode to transform his star into a puppet. The deadline was very short but I accepted the challenge. I created the design and made the puppet with the effigy of Tom Hudson who plays the character of Like. I then met this beautiful team during the 3 days of shooting when I handled the puppet on the set.

Client: R line production- Disney
JULES VERNE

In April 2018 I received an incredible call. Nicolas Nebot, who admires my work on Jeff Panacloc's show, wants to stage his musical on Jules Verne at the Edouard VII theatre in Paris and wants me to take care of the creation of the puppets for this show. So I very quickly started the heavy design and manufacturing process of Jules Verne, his brother Paul, his sister Anna and Dina a dinosaur. A huge job for a premiere in October and rehearsals in early September. I called upon the brilliant Jean-Louis Veron to make the puppet mechanisms that open the mouth and close the eyes. I then trained the puppeteers for several weeks to learn how to play this new instrument. I spent whole days with Emmanuel Suarez (who was already great on Avenue Q), Cécilia Cara, Léo-Paul Salmain, Solen Sawen and the whole great troupe. The show, which is being repeated for an additional season, is nominated at Les Molières in the category of best show for young audiences. Show by Nicolas Nebot and Dominique Mattei.

Client: Robin Production
NUNS AT THE CABARET

For the needs of a cabaret act I made two nuns in puppet. The actor who is in the middle with a suit with fake arms, puts on the two puppets on each side. Thus the spectator thinks he sees 3 good sisters from behind before discovering the number.
GREVIN MUSEUM

Life has some great surprises in store! What a surprise it was to receive a call from Grévin to make them a Jean-Marc. Indeed they are in charge of making Jeff Panacloc's double in wax, but his famous monkey is needed on his arm. I called upon the very talented Charles Hartenstein to mechanize the puppet I made for this prestigious museum. I discovered a very cheerful and friendly team with whom I enjoyed working. It is a great honour to have his work exhibited at Grévin !

Client: Grévin Museum
ZOE AND EDGAR

Zoe is a ventriloquist who contacted me to redesign her puppet, a snake named Edgar. I think Edgard with his 2m50 is the longest puppet I've ever made. The videos of Zoé and Edgar are available on Zoé KAYO's Youtube channel.

Client: Zoé et Edgar
TEAM VITALITY

Team Vitality is a French electronic sports club founded by Fabien Devide, Corentin Houssein and Kevin Georges. I was contacted at the end of 2018 to create a puppet with the effigy of Fabien "Néo" Devide. I manipulated this puppet for the shooting of the happy new year video broadcasted on December 31st on youtube. This shooting had Kyan Khojandi, the star of the popular French TV show "Bref", as guest.

Client: Team Vitality
MASCOT OF JEAN-MARC

Design and manufacturing of a 2 meters high mascot of Jean-Marc (Jeff Panacloc), for the animation in big venues.

Client: Artistic Records / Jeff Panacloc
Images courtesy of Artistic Records and Jeff Panacloc
CUSTOM PUPPETS

We can design and manufacture characters for puppeteers, ventriloquists, magicians, TV producers, theater producer, or advertising agencies, whatever their desires!