Rick Lazzarini

Rick Lazzarini is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of The Character Shop, creating fantastic creatures, puppets and animatronic effects for over twenty five years. Lazzarini has built and puppeteered creations from a miniature six inch replica of Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell for "Hook," to life- sized elephants for "Operation Dumbo Drop", all the way up to a beautiful 20 foot tall marionette for Mayflower Moving. He heads the Animatronics Institute, has taught courses at USC, UCLA and AFI, and is a guest instructor at the Stan Winston School of Character Arts.