Duke Cullen

Duke Cullen is a special effects designer, makeup artist, and performer who has been working with the Creature Shop since the late 1990s. He was a puppet cosmetic technician for Cats & Dogs, The Country Bears, and Snow Dogs as well as a puppet wrangler for Turkey Hollow. Duke has also been credited as a finisher for three films; George of the Jungle (also puppeteered), Dr. Dolittle, and Jack Frost. Cullen even designed the characters for the show Brats of the Lost Nebula which was his only Henson project for television. Outside of the Creature Shop, he has often performed in gorilla suits and is also one of the members of a Planet of the Apes re-enactment group called Apemania. Otherwise, he has mostly done special makeup effects for many films such as Murder in the First (with Bill Barretta in the cast), Inland Empire, Shoot 'Em Up, and Chillerama, to name a few. Other performers Duke Cullen worked with include Pons Maar, Michelan Sisti, Rob Tygner, and Leif Tilden, to name a few. I wonder what he is doing now since nobody has heard from him after 2017 when he did an episode of Fear the Walking Dead. Let's just hope he's still doing special effects and/or makeup for films, because it doesn't make sense to just stop without telling anyone. Maybe someday Duke will get interviewed for doing both the Creature Shop and Apemania. Could Cullen still be a member of Apemania today or not if the group is now defunct? At least he's shown of his skills to the Creature Shop for many years and is probably still doing so currently, you never know. In the meantime, if the Creature Shop ever does a new production, I'm sure the designers will contact him to give special effects. Duke Cullen, you've done so well as a makeup artist and special effects designer. You also did wonderful working with the Creature Shop on many projects. Keep on working with them as well as doing freelance stuff in your free time. You have really made every creature look so realistic Duke. No one can do it like you Cullen!

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