Henson Performance Control System

The Henson Performance Control System (also known as "Big1") is an Academy Award-winning system for controlling the performance of animatronic puppet characters developed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. It was developed in 1989 and first used extensively in the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The system's breakthrough was that it gave a single puppeteer control over elaborate animatronic characters which had previously required entire teams of performers to control. The system itself consists of a dedicated, custom-built computer along with one or more manual input devices that allow a single puppeteer to control up to 32 individual servos and 8 motor actuators in an animatronic puppet.

The system was extended in 1990 with a program called Performance Editor, which enabled puppeteers to record, edit and playback their performances to create pre-programmed lip sync. The Performance Editor was first used in the film Babe.

In 2000 The Henson Performance Control System was replaced by The Henson Digital Performance System, an expanded and updated character control system based on Performance Editor and Big1, which can be used to perform 3D computer animated characters in real-time as well as more traditional animatronic puppets.