How Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio pushed puppet armatures into 3D-printed metal

Skwigly Animation Magazine's October 2022 interview with puppet supervisor Georgina Hayns and production designer Guy Davis, conducted by Laura-Beth Cowley, describes how Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio pushed puppet armature-making past the standard machined ball-and-socket skeleton. Mackinnon and Saunders built the puppets, and armature engineer Richard Pickersgill combined his background as a traditional armature maker with 3D printing in metal alloys Hayns says "lend themselves more for puppet skeletons than the metals that they started off printing with," producing joint structures the studio had not built before.

Hayns is candid about where the approach still failed: an attempt at ball-and-socket eye joints under silicone mechanical skins broke down because raising an eyebrow pulled the skin away from the eye socket, leaving a visible gap. The team abandoned that mechanism and built the eyes into the character's carved wooden knots instead. Folded into the Wiki's armature page as a sourced case study for 3D-printed metal skeletons, alongside the existing wire and machined ball-and-socket families.