Clockwork Corpse Bride puppets

While I still maintain that it’s animation and not puppetry (see previous post) it seems that Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride does make use of some interesting new puppetry technology. Apparently a company in Manchester, England has developed a way to change the facial expressions of 12-inch-tall marionettes with clockwork heads by slipping an Allen wrench into one of their ears and the technology has been adapted for stop motion by the team working on Corpse Bride. Does anyone out there know more about this or who the company in Manchester is?

You can read more about the behind-the-scenes work on Corpse Bride at MTV.

Update: The puppets were produced by the UK’s Mackinnon & Saunders. Thanks to Mike, Jose and everyone else who wrote in to let me know (I thought Jose’s linkage en español was especially neat).