In the United States, puppetry is primarily perceived as children's entertainment, though a few puppet designers have made the art form accessible to adult audiences.
Popular American puppet designers include Bill Baird, Jim Henson, and Julie Taymor.
Stan Winston of Stan Winston Studios considers many of his character creations to be puppets and for motion pictures his operating crews join the Screen Actors Guild because they are essentially performing directly through an inanimate, if sometimes robotic object.
As they are operated directly by people and not pre-programmed, Stan Winston creations can be considered puppets rather than robots.
Fictional puppet designers include Mister Geppetto in The Adventures of Pinocchio, and Gein in Rurouni Kenshin.