David Barrington Holt, who was instrumental in development of the ground-breaking Henson Performance Control System, which allowed a single performer to operate complex, computer-driven puppets, died March 13 from cancer complications.
His credits included George of the Jungle, The Phantom, Dr. Dolittle, and Scooby-Doo, among other productions.
Born in England in June of 1945, he received his BA in Industrial Design with honors from London’s University of the Arts in 1963.
Over the next 20 years, he built a reputation as a designer, photographer, modelmaker, and restorer of mechanical antiquities. His clients included the London Science Museum, the Greater London Council, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and numerous other businesses and private individuals in England and abroad.
In 1984, he founded Hero Models, which supplied models, miniatures, and hero effects for the TV, film, and commercial industries. One such project including re-creating the fly-past of the spacecraft Giotto and Halley’s comet for the film Children of the Dust.
In 1986, he began a 23-year collaboration with the Jim Henson Company, first in the UK as Deputy Supervisor of the Creature Shop, before moving up to Creative Supervisor.
He made the move to Los Angeles in 1993 to establish and operate the Henson company’s first west-coast Creature Shop for the purpose of producing Disney’s television show Dinosaurs. He had creative oversight of shop operations, including puppetry, animatronics, effects for feature films, television, and commercials,performers; administrative matters, and R&D, with developments in the field of real-time 3D CG animation.
Following his decades with the Henson Company, he spent three years consulting for Walt Disney Imagineering R&D, where he assisted in the technical transfer of innovative animatronic characters into public exhibits.
He spent the remainder of his extensive and varied career working and consulting for companies, including the Chiodo Brothers, Insudung Media, 11:11 Creative, and Reisman Models.
He is survived by his wife and son.
