Star Wars and The Muppets' designer shares 'miracles' from his studio

Steve Allen has worked on Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, and other creations like Max (R)

With some 1,300 toy and puppet projects under his belt, Steve Allen can proudly say he has spent "46 years being a five-year-old".

The walls of his studio in Stroud, Gloucestershire, are a miniature shrine to some of the most popular entertainment series and films in recent decades.

Mr Allen, 62, has worked with The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, the film Labyrinth, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants, Thunderbirds and Star Trek, among others, as a toy designer, puppet creator and puppeteer.

"The irony is Max [one of his creations] has his own Facebook page, [he has] four times more friends than I do and he even gets birthday wishes, and these are not kids, these are adults sending them, and that's wonderful," Mr Allen said.

He said people connect with puppets and models in a way they cannot with computer-generated imagery, and there is still a need for them in films.

"It's real, it's there, and you can touch it," he said.

Mr Allen's workshop has souvenirs from various productions on display

"A few years ago, a child came up to me after a talk, and gave Max a big hug," Mr Allen added.

"Her parents were in tears because she had never opened up like that before, and she totally believed he was real," he said.

"There's a lot of people like myself who believe that actually making something has soul to it.

"When you take that away and everything's green screen it's incredibly difficult to be in the role and I'm so glad you've got people like Peter Jackson who still want to do films using models and sets.

"There's too much stuff being produced now that just looks like a video game and you can see it's not real even though they've spent millions of dollars trying to make this thing look fantastic," he added.

Mr Allen made this model Snowspeeder ahead of the launch of The Phantom Menace in 1999

Among the various puppets on display in his workshop is a large model Snowspeeder from the Star Wars series.

"In the 1990s, I was asked to take some drawings of ships from the Star Wars saga, and make models exactly like the ones used in the film.

"I had no idea why. I was paid, and they were taken away, and I was later invited to London and taken to a boardroom.

"There was a cubicle which was showing a five minute clip of a new film, which later went on to be The Phantom Menace. I think I was one of the first people in the country to see it.

"Basically what I had done was make glorious table decorations for this meeting to do with the rights for toys, the music and so on.

"A few weeks later a box turned up and it was the model I now have in this case."

Mr Allen said he had been offered large sums of money for the model, but would never sell it.

Puppeteer Steve Allen spent part of his career working on the Muppets with Jim Henson (pictured)

Mr Allen designed characters and toys for Henson Enterprise, an offshoot of the Jim Henson Company, which produced The Muppets.

"Jim was so trusting with the people around him.

"In the late 1980s, I was asked to design the toy versions for Muppet Babies, and I was getting nervous thinking I would screw it up.

"Jim said 'Steve you obviously know what you're doing, just do what you think is right', and he just gave me the entire project to go away and do it."

Mr Allen now gives talks using some of the puppets from his career in the industry

After many years freelancing, Mr Allen now gives talks to raise money for charity, like a recent one for Longfield Hospice at Marling School, Stroud, to encourage the next generation of model makers, and to raise awareness of mental health struggles.

He said: "The trouble is that you're up against not only huge deadlines, but also some massive egos.

"And the pressure that's applied to you to create miracles in very little time mounts up.

"I've seen a lot of people suffer from stress in the creative industry, especially in films, and in fact, two of my colleagues in the past have actually taken their own lives because of this.

"I suddenly realised there's huge sections of my life where I was working seven days a week and you can't do that, it almost killed my career."

"Now because I took a step back and started to do something else, it kind of saved me," he added.

"When people say to me: 'I want to try doing this myself,' I say: 'Yeah, go for it. Please go for it. Life is short.'"

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