RIP Lyle Conway

Sad news as veteran Creature Shop sculptor Lyle Conway has died. 

Conway began his career at the Henson Company in the Muppet Workshop on The Muppet Show.  

He was later asked design the creatures and be the fabrication supervisor on The Dark Crystal sculpting many Skeksis, Urskeks, and Aughra.

On Dreamchild he oversaw the entire shop making sure The Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Lewis Carrol's other creatures looked as close as possible to the book's descriptions and illustrations. After Dreamchild, he freelanced for other films and returned to The Creature Shop to work on Where the Wild Thigs Are. 

Jim's Red book from 7/16/1984 – ‘Dreamchild begins shooting.’ includes this passage about Lyle:

"Designer Lyle Conway, having followed The Dark Crystal with work on the film Return to Oz, was tapped by Jim to oversee the shop for Dreamchild. Conway’s experience paid off and the build exploited everything he and the team had learned, using it in a much more efficient fashion. The budget was tight and, as Conway described, it “…turned out to be one fourth the work [of The Dark Crystal] at ten times the speed. We had 14 weeks to build everything, which is no time at all for us, and I think we stayed that much fresher as a result.” The film opened in summer 1985 to generally positive reviews, particularly for Coral Browne’s performance as Alice, and the writers made much of the creatures from Jim’s shop. The review in The Guardian noted, “The realization by Jim Henson and his team of the fabled creatures of Lewis Carroll’s imagination is beguilingly original.”

A few of Conway's non-Creature Shop work included 1988's The Blob and Return to Oz, in which he not only worked on the creatures, but also performed the voice and face of the Gump. His most notable post-Henson credit was on Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors designing Audrey II in each different phase, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.

Below you can see Lyle work brought to life.