Squirrel Bears, Robin Hill

Woodland Theatre. Guest Interaction. Two Generations of Squirrel Bear. Four Weeks.

Commission: Vectis Ventures / Robin Hill Country Park | The Squirrel Bears | Hand Puppet Characters for Theatre & Guest Interaction

The Brief

Robin Hill Country Park — one of the Isle of Wight's most beloved family visitor attractions, and a long-term Creature Encounter client through Vectis Ventures — wanted puppet versions of their Squirrel Bear characters: the park's own beloved animal hybrids, designed to perform within their Woodland Theatre and to roam the park for guest interactions.

The brief had a particular and charming complexity: the Squirrel Bears needed to exist in two forms simultaneously. An adult version — fully mechanised, capable of the expressive range required for theatrical performance — and a child version, simpler and more robust, built for the kind of enthusiastic handling that young visitors at a theme park will inevitably deliver.

Two characters. Two versions. Four weeks.

The Build

The adult Squirrel Bear is a fully realised hand puppet with a trigger-operated mouth, eyelid mechanism and wrist articulation — the combination of mechanisms that gives a performer the expressive vocabulary to carry a scene, hold an audience's attention and respond in the moment to whatever a Woodland Theatre performance or a guest interaction encounter throws at them.

The child version strips that back to the essentials: a simple hand puppet, built for the demands of young hands rather than trained ones, robust enough to survive the vigorous affection of a park full of children and light enough to be operated without strain or fatigue. No triggers, no mechanisms — just a character, clean and clear and completely alive in the right hands.

The design challenge was holding the two versions in a coherent visual relationship: the child puppet needed to be recognisably the same character as the adult, reduced to its essence rather than simplified into incoherence. A child holding a Squirrel Bear hand puppet needed to feel that they were holding the same creature their parents had just watched perform in the Woodland Theatre — the same character, at a different scale, in a different register.

That coherence was achieved. It is, in some ways, the most demanding design challenge in the commission — and the one that is least visible in the finished product, which is exactly as it should be.

A Note on Multi-Version Character Builds

The Squirrel Bears commission is a clear example of a brief that many clients do not initially think to ask for but that, once explored, almost always makes creative and operational sense: a single character family delivered across multiple formats for multiple contexts and multiple users.

A fully mechanised puppet for trained performers. A simplified version for young visitors. A walk-around animatronic suit for park roaming. A hand puppet for intimate theatre. These are not competing approaches — they are a coherent character strategy, each format serving its own context while reinforcing the others. A child who holds the simple Squirrel Bear puppet is more invested in the adult puppet's theatrical performance. An audience who has watched the adult puppet perform in the Woodland Theatre is more delighted when they encounter the character again in the park.

We think about character builds in this way — as ecosystems rather than objects — and we are very glad to discuss what a multi-format character strategy might look like for your project.

The Specifications

Adult version: trigger-operated mouth, eyelid mechanism, wrist articulation. Child version: simple hand puppet, robust construction, lightweight. Two characters, two versions each. Built for Woodland Theatre performance and park guest interaction.

Build time: Four weeks.

The Vectis Ventures Partnership

The Squirrel Bears are the fourth Creature Encounters commission for Vectis Ventures — following the POLAR bears and Squirrel Bear walk-around characters at Robin Hill, and Cedric the Dragon and the Dodos at Blackgang Chine. Each commission has deepened the relationship, trust, and shared understanding of what these parks and their audiences need from their characters.

Robin Hill now has a character family built across multiple formats by a single maker who understands the park, the audiences, the performers and the operational context from the inside. That continuity produces better characters. It also produces a smoother, faster, lower-risk commissioning process — because so much of what would otherwise need to be established from scratch already exists in the relationship.

Thinking About Something Similar?

If you are a visitor attraction, theme park, children's entertainment company or broadcaster looking to build a character — or a character family — across multiple formats for multiple contexts, we would love to talk.

We are experienced in multi-version character builds, from fully mechanised performance puppets to simplified visitor interaction versions, and we think carefully about how the different formats of a character reinforce each other to create a coherent and lasting audience relationship.

To arrange an informal, no-obligation Discovery Call with Jamie and Michael, please use the Enquire button below.

Creature Encounters are designers, makers and performers of extraordinary puppet experiences, based in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. We have delivered bespoke puppet characters for visitor attractions, theme parks, theatre and live events across the UK and internationally, for clients including Vectis Ventures / Robin Hill Country Park, Vectis Ventures / Blackgang Chine, Away Resorts, Mark Thompson Productions, Atomic London / Greater Anglia Trains, Animal Madness Ltd, Big Brum Theatre in Education, Lakeside Arts Nottingham, and the Remal International Festival in Kuwait.