Norman Tempia was a puppet builder in The Muppet Workshop for ten years, including Fraggle Rock and various specials.
After leaving the Muppets, Tempia worked on several live-action films, building or puppeteering animal or monster effects such as dogs for Beethoven and Beethoven's 2nd, alien effects for Alien³, a reindeer head for Jingle All the Way, the poodles in Interview with the Vampire, a grizzly bear for Anchorman, and the title chimp in Ed. Several of these projects were done through his own company, Animated FX Inc., co-owned with Dave Nelson. Animated FX also made animal puppets for Hostess snack cake commercials, revised characters for the Fox version of Greg the Bunny, and Tempia served as designer and principal puppeteer for Team America: World Police. Tempia also served as a puppet builder for The Puzzle Place.
Muppet/Henson credits[]
- Fraggle Rock: Doozers builder, others
- The Muppets Take Manhattan: Muppet design and construction
- Follow That Bird: additional Muppet design and construction; built Hoots the Owl
- Muppet Babies Live!: builder/animator of walk-around character heads
- The Tale of the Bunny Picnic: puppet design
- The Christmas Toy: built Bleep and Cruiser
- Puppetman: built Candle
- Inner Tube: Muppet design group
- The Jim Henson Hour
- "Dog City": dog builder; built Scruffy
- "The Song of the Cloud Forest"
- "Secrets of the Muppets": design team for Jojo
- Muppet Babies Storybook Calendar 1990: photo puppet building