Meet Jasper: The First BizarreBeasts Puppet in Real Life
Check out the video of Jasper going BIZARRE in Bentonville and our studio
My hand-illustrated BIZARRE goat, Jasper, now exists in real life! He’s been hanging out with me in the studio and around Bentonville between takes for the BizarreBeasts animated series. 😆
Since 2021, the BizarreBeasts have lived in my sketchbooks, on canvas, and on screens. You can look at them, play games with them, and very soon watch them in the animated series, but you’ve never been able to hold one.
That changed when a package arrived at the studio here in Bentonville, containing Jasper: a custom hand puppet built directly from my original drawings.
Who Is Jasper?
If you’re part of the BizarreBeasts community, you already know Jasper as the BIZARRE GOAT, our official community mascot.
In the BizarreBeasts animated series my wife, Kate, and I are creating for exclusive release on DCP+, Jasper is a main character and a Lab Technician at Bizarre Labs. He also stars in our upcoming Learning Lab episodes in production.
Jasper finds the funny in everything, never reads the room or takes things seriously, and somehow everyone likes him anyway. He’s the ringleader of shenanigans around Bizarre Labs.
Now he is a real-life puppet, too.
Here is a side-by-side of Jasper in Bizarre City and in live in Bentonville! 👇
From Illustration to Puppet
I sent my drawings of Jasper to a US-based maker that creates custom plush and puppets. It takes several people many weeks to develop the item, including a design approval process.
Then came the hardest part: waiting for Jasper to arrive.
Opening the package and seeing him for the first time was a big deal in the BizarreBeasts studio!
I set Jasper on my drafting table next to my illustration of him on paper and the rig on my iPad, and it was the exact same guy looking back at me: the horns, the beard, the mismatched eyes, and the big mouth of jagged teeth. A character that had only ever existed as lines on paper and on a screen was now something I could pick up.
My wife, Kate, got excited right away, and we started brainstorming all the fun things we could do with Jasper in and around Bentonville.
Why a Puppet
Turning Jasper into a puppet felt like a natural next step. Since 2021, everything I’ve made with the BizarreBeasts has been about bringing these characters to life: first drawing them, then painting them, then building software to rig and animate them, and giving them voices for the series.
A puppet takes that process one step further. It gives a character a real, physical presence, which something I can share a room or around the city.
I want to expand how people experience BizarreBeasts in real life and give everyone a new way to interact with the artwork beyond digital screens.
In the framework I’ll be teaching at the Ozark Media Arts Festival on October 7, one of the five core steps is Play: let people interact with your work, not just look at it. A puppet might be the most literal version of that idea I’ve built so far. You can’t bump into an animation at the local coffee shop or library, but you can bump into Jasper as a physical puppet.
What Jasper is going to help with:
Live Storytelling: Jasper can react, talk to the camera, and GO BIZARRE in real places, in real time.
Behind the Scenes: He can show you around the studio and how the series gets made.
Kids Content: Puppets and kids go together, making Jasper a natural fit for family-friendly BizarreBeasts content.
A Physical Benchmark: He’s my first real test of what one of the BizarreBeasts feels like as something you can hold.
In a world full of screens and a mass of digital content, people seem to be craving interactions and things made by human hands. The Jasper puppet simply grew out of my goal to expand the storytelling possibilities of my work.
What’s Next for Jasper
Keep an eye out for Jasper in behind-the-scenes videos from the studio and short clips on social. He’s already made his debut in the Square in downtown Bentonville!
And Jasper might not be alone for long. 👀
