Puppet Designer / Creature Designer

Joe Blanck is a multi-disciplinary creature designer, builder and creative director whose work combines traditional scenic and sculptural craft with large-scale puppetry, performance and emerging technology. 

• Founder & Creative Director, A Blanck Canvas — leads the development and delivery of large-scale creatures, puppets and theatrical productions from initial concept through fabrication, performance and finishing. 

• Former Creature Painter / Concept Artist, Creature Technology Company — spent six years working on internationally recognised productions including Walking with Dinosaurs, How to Train Your Dragon – Arena Spectacular and King Kong.

• Extensive creature-building expertise — works across concept design, sculpting, scenic painting, fabrication, illustration and three-dimensional construction. 

• Puppetry & performance specialist — experienced in puppet creation, manipulation and performance, with a strong understanding of how physical creatures function and communicate in live environments. 

• Technology-integrated design — combines traditional puppetry and fabrication techniques with contemporary technology to create increasingly sophisticated large-scale creatures. 

• More than two decades of scenic and fabrication experience — began his professional career as a scenic artist before moving into creature design and large-scale theatrical production.