From Sock Puppets To Drooling Latex Creatures: A Puppeteer’s Journey

Peek into the Sacramento garage of a science-fiction aficionado who is making a movie about puppets in space. 

By Johanna Harlow

A still from Bond’s in-the-works puppet movie, Galaxy Express. (Credit: Peter Bond)

Have you ever wondered what surprises lay stashed behind people’s garage doors? 

Even in your wildest imaginings, you won’t guess what Peter Bond stores in his — unless, that is, you guessed aliens. In which case, you’d be correct.

Not living breathing aliens, of course. More the kind you stick your hand inside. 

Bond, a master puppeteer and sci-fi storyteller from Sacramento, California, has crafted each and every one of his oddball cast of creatures. Everywhere you look throughout his garage, you’ll spot them: a grey-green fellow with a draconian face perched on his workbench, a quadruple chinned alien with finned ears atop a box, a red robot with a giant lens for an eye in the corner.

But Bond’s puppets aren't just idle guests taking up room. Soon, his lifelike creatures of foam and latex will star in his live-action puppet space film Galaxy Express, which chronicles the daring tale of a spaceship captain and his sidekick as the pair endeavor to outwit a nasty crew of Zargon pirates.

Though these intergalactic exploits are indeed gripping, Bond’s own journey is just as intriguing.

Peter Bond shows off one of the many creatures he’s made in his Sacramento garage.

The Making of a Puppeteer

Looking at it now, it’s hard to imagine Bond’s garage alien-free only eight years back. 

Not that Bond wasn’t a creative kid.

He certainly was: fashioning tiny boats out of walnut shells and logging some serious hours on many a LEGO masterpiece. Regrettably, that imaginative side went on hiatus after he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in second grade. He struggled with OCD and depression as a result. It was only about a decade ago that he began taking medication — and it helped immensely. Suddenly, his creative spirit sparked once again to life.

Sock puppets were his gateway drug. After repurposing some old socks to entertain his toddler, he decided to explore with better materials, more complex designs. Before long, Bond was delving into the ins-and-outs of sculpting, mold-making, and airbrush painting  — not to mention navigating the nuances of how to make realistic fleshy faces with monster makeup prosthetics books and how to wire cables for blinking mechanisms. He even discovered glycerin’s usefulness as fake saliva when rubbed on a puppet’s teeth and tongue.

One of the stars of Bond’s Galaxy Express.

These days, it takes Bond about 40 to 60 hours to capture every little skin fold, talon, and tentacle of his complex creatures, and he can wax poetic about the benefits and drawbacks of using silicone versus foam latex.

“[Foam latex] feels like skin, it's crazy,” he said, slipping his hand inside the closest puppet and gumming its mouth realistically.

“But it does wrinkle a bit when you touch it, so I'm getting more into silicone lately. But then that's heavier so you run into other issues with that, but it looks really lifelike.”

From Novice to Intergalactic Storyteller

After crafting numerous characters, Bond decided to give them an opportunity to flex their zany personalities with a strong storyline. 

“I like to treat them as actors,” he said with a grin.

The sci-fi genre was a no brainer for the puppeteer.  

“I'm just fascinated with space. I think that would be a dream to be traveling through space and running into crazy shit.” 

As if to make his point, Bond rummaged around for a moment, then retrieved an eyeless, parasitic creature. 

“This thing is going to come out of a chick's head,” he said.

The result was Galaxy Express, a cosmic adventure Bond wrote for a kid’s show at his local community center. With only so many hands available, the puppeteer recruited several actors from improv comedy nights as well as members from local playwright and filmmaker groups to take on some of the character roles. 

Before turning his science-fiction tale into a film, Bond tested his material on kids.

“We had to figure out how to block out all the light in the windows and use this really bad projector,” he recalls of the makeshift performance space. “It was kind of hard to see, but I projected images of what was going on in the background instead of [using] backdrops.”

Despite technical difficulties, Bond remembered these shows fondly. 

“[The kids] were ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ at the right spots in the show and cheering when [the heroes] defeated their enemies.”

After the community center, Bond graduated to a local theater — with actual chairs rather than gym mats for seating. Then he decided to take it a step further by bringing the story to film.

That was over a year ago and Galaxy Express is nearly complete.

After recruiting a director of photography, five actors, and an additional puppeteer, then converting his main actor’s garage into a film studio, Bond crafted a 28-minute cut of his live action movie. Adding visual effects is the next step, and he will be raising funds with a Kickstarter campaign that launches in August.

Bond helped transform his main actor’s garage into a filming studio.

Besides producing those VFX touches, Bond hopes to add layers of authenticity to his space film by featuring live actors and puppets side-by-side.

“It just does something to your brain where it’s easier to accept as reality when you see what you know is real,” he explained. “They're given validity by having an actor that interacts with them.”

That emphasis on realism is why Bond has never been a huge Muppets fan. 

“It's not the style that I go for… the fabric-y stuff,” he said with a shrug. 

Which isn’t to say he can’t appreciate the show’s creator Jim Henson, who also lent his expertise to Labyrinth, Bond’s all-time favorite movie with its intriguing blend of Alice in Wonderland meets Where the Wild Things Are. 

“The puppets are not clearly puppets,” he said of the live action film.

“They could be mistaken for real things.” 

Another Galaxy Express star, named Charlie.

Certainly, Bond’s own puppets match that level of lifelike-ness — the kind of quality achieved only through painstaking precision, an eye for detail, and tenacious trial-and-error persistence.

Coming Soon…

Back at Bond’s garage, there’s almost an air of expectancy among the finned, fuzzy, scaled, and spikey residents. It’s as if they’re prepping backstage before their big space film debut. 

Someday, perhaps, they’ll be a household name — but until they’re released into the world, they’ll be waiting patiently here in this unassuming suburban garage.

Johanna Harlow celebrates the stories of colorful creatives both through her work as a journalist as well as the host of The Local Creative, a Youtube show about Bay Area artists.

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