Director Toben Seymour earns two paychecks when working on set; one as a puppeteer, and one as a director. No, Toben does not direct videos for children’s sing-a-long groups. He creates music videos for artists that include the Willowz, Will.i.am, Herman Dune, Moby and Kanye West. Toben readily admits that making puppets for a living, for people over the age of six, isn’t the most common of professions. “When people ask you what you do for a living, and you say, ‘I make puppets,’ it’s pretty cool. My building partner, Ross [Reige], thinks it would be awesome to be able to say at 55 that we still make puppets for a living.”

Toben developed the unique habit of seeing characters in everyday objects at a young age. “[As a kid], I would see inanimate objects and draw faces on them. I would then animate those objects.” This habit found its creative match when Toben discovered puppetry while home sick from middle school one day. He watched a documentary on television that revealed some of the secrets behind the making of Jim Henson’s Muppets. Toben recorded the special, and that very same day he made his first puppet.

Although the Muppets are Toben’s primary source of inspiration, Bun Raku, an ancient form of Japanese puppetry, also influences him tremendously. In Bun Raku three to four puppeteers bring one puppet to life. All the puppeteers dress in black, and traditionally, the lead puppeteer doesn’t wear a hood so the audience can see his face. Toben takes the idea of the puppeteer as an important part of the performance, and combines it with the Muppets’ style.

Toben’s influence by Henson goes beyond mechanics and aesthetics. “Jim Henson,” he explains, “revolutionized the puppet world.” Henson took puppetry, which was traditionally a live stage performance, and brought it to film and television. Toben plans to pick up the torch, so to speak, and unlock the endless possibilities found in the combination of puppetry and film. “I’m interested in finding new ways to push film, to study the science behind film, to combine animation, and puppetry to create fantasy. I’m trying to push it in new directions.” Toben plans to create feature length animated films starring puppets and people side by side.