The Story Behind DMPCreative

Four Decades of Puppetry Craft

DMPCreative is the work of Dave, a professional puppeteer who has dedicated over 40 years to the art of puppet design and performance. His career began in the 1980s and quickly grew into something remarkable — co-founding Animax Designs, a studio that designed and built characters for some of the country's most iconic theme parks, earning two regional Emmy Awards along the way.

In the early 2000s, Dave was approached by a Denver-area producer to improve and build puppets for a well-known children's video series. He designed and constructed the first five characters, and the videos were a tremendous success — leading to Dave creating and puppeteering across many more titles in the series. It was, as he describes it, "the best kind of work for a puppeteer: steady, creative, and meaningful."

When the video series came to an end, Dave assumed that chapter of his career was closed. Then, years later, messages started arriving from a devoted community of fans — many of them young people on the autism spectrum who had grown up loving the characters. They asked if Dave could make more puppets of the same quality. By contract, he couldn't reproduce the originals — but he could create something new. And so the "Little Genius" series was born.

DMPCreative launched on Etsy in 2018. Since then, Dave has shipped over 900 orders to fans, performers, therapists, and collectors around the world — every single one made by hand, on demand, with care and intention.