Full-Bodied Muppet

Full-Bodied Muppet, sometimes known as full-costume Muppets, are large scale characters who combine elements of puppetry and costuming. Some of the most famous Muppets, from Big Bird to Bear, fall into this category. Christopher Finch, "These figures are a kind of hybrid, not so much true puppets as costumes to which a puppet head has been attached.... The eyes, if necessary, can be operated by remote control. These creatures are sometimes half again as tall as the puppeteer inside."

Early Full-Bodied Muppets
Splurge from Hey Cinderella! and The LaChoy Dragon were amongst the earliest full-bodied characters. The LaChoy Dragon would alternate between a large-scale Live-Hand Muppet for special effects shots or scenes with other puppets and a full-bodied character (performed by Frank Oz, who grew to hate the role) for scenes that involved terrorizing supermarket patrons or knocking over cans. A variant of this type were characters such as the farmers in The Muppet Musicians of Bremen who were not fully costumed, but had special puppet heads worn by live actors.

Functions and Scale
Full-bodied Muppets are often used as ogres or monsters (as with Sweetums or Doglion), because they can tower over puppets and human performers alike. Big Bird's height is generally given as 8 feet, while Bear is seven feet tall and Thog's height was generally estimated as at least 9 1/2 feet. Their size allows for more complex facial mechanisms as well as almost completely free movement. While Grover or Kermit the Frog can only interact with live actors by careful placement via concealing walls, platforms, or other tricks, full-bodied characters can fully interact with human actors for dancing, hugging, fighting, or any other movements required. For this reason, nearly every international version of Sesame Street has at least one full-bodied character, that country's own "Big Bird" (who indeed, in many cases actually is a bird). Bear's size, on the other hand, allows him to take a more fully paternal role towards the smaller, more child-like characters on Bear in the Big Blue House or the real-life children on Breakfast with Bear.

Not all full-bodied characters are larger than life, however. Characters such as Hoggle or the Dodos from Follow That Bird are smaller, for contrast with larger puppets or human performers. Still other times, full-bodied versions of characters who are otherwise hand puppets are constructed, at a scale comparable to their puppets and inhabited by little people performers, for use in dance or stunt scenes. Miss Piggy existed in this form for both The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan, while various Skeksis from The Dark Crystal and goblins from Labyrinth were also performed this way.

Visibility
The fact that a full-bodied character is completely inhabited by the performer allows for greater freedom of moevemtn, but also brings its own problems, most notably visibilty. Whereas hand puppet performers can simply look beyond the puppet or see through a camera monitor positioned in front of the set, other techniques have had to be developed for the full-bodied creations. The early characters like the LaChoy Dragon were performed virtually blind. For later characters, according to Finch, "The puppeteer sees out through a carefully concealed scrim and works the mouth with any of various hand and rod devices." Advancements in small-scale monitors and other technical devices greatly improved the situation. For Bear, Big Bird, and Ludo, amongst others, their respective performers have a monitor and wireless microphone strapped to their chests or stomachs, allowing them to see out. Later, special cameras within the head were developed, beginning with Fraggle Rock, for characters operated by more than one puppeteer

Operation and Movement
For Big Bird, Bear, Sweetums, and others, a single performer plays the character, providing both voice and movements, and that performer is almost always consistent. The performer uses their right hand to operate the mouth, eyes, and other facial mechanisms, pushing the hand into the head area, while the left inhabits the left arm. The right arm for such characters, though very occasionally allowed to hang free, is generally operated by a special monofilament, which the performer can manipulate from the inside. Other times, as with the hand puppets, special camera techniques and computer tricks are used to allow an assistant to operate the other limbs. Someone such as Mr. Snuffleupagus is operated by two performers, in the manner of a masquerade or circus horse, one operating the front end and face, and the other the backlegs and tail. With the exceptions of recasts or occasional substitutions, full-bodied puppeteers are usually consistently cast as their character, and indeed sometimes come to specialize in this variety of puppetry, as exemplified by Caroll Spinney (Big Bird), Noel MacNeal (Bear), or Richard Hunt (Sweetums), allowing for the development of a consistent, familiar, and complex personality. Others, like Doglion or Timmy Monster, have often been handed over to whoever was available and could fit in the suit, and thus have remained basically background characters as opposed to stars.

Beginning with the Gorgs Fraggle Rock, advancements in technology allowed for a different way to operate full-bodied characters. One performer, usually trained in pantomime or physical action, would wear the suit and perform all of the physical movments, with monitors embedded and raised within the heavily wired head allowing the performer to see out and also have their line of vision be identical with that of the character, a method Jim Henson dubbed "Gorg Vision." A second performer, standing nearby, provides the voice and operates the radio-controlled facial features (eyes, mouth, brows, etc.) via a Waldo, at the same time as the suit puppeteer is performing. This technique was used extensively in Labyrinth, with additional performers assisting with the radio controls for even more complex movements. For Dinosaurs, typically a third performer would be involved, the voice actor, whose dialogue would generally be recorded over the original scratch track by the facial puppeteer.

Other times, the voice and face are minimal factors at best. Characters such as Betsy Bird, Fletcher Bird, The Mutations, or Ballerina Pig were created specifically for dance sequences. Though the designs of the characters are as detailed and expressive as any other Muppet, the mouths, while often open, are seldom moved, allowing the dancer to focus on fully operating the character and moving all four limbs at the same time. Performers such as Graham Fletcher, with backgrounds in dance and ballet rather than puppetry, were frequently cast in these roles.

Four Legged Characters and Multi-Character Operations
With the exception of the two person Snuffy, the previously discussed characters are all upright and their movements are essentially exaggerations or caricatures of human motion, while incorprating certain aspects of the animal or creature they represent. Other characters are more fully animal.