FoxSearchlight.com

See actual sketches and mechanical skeletons for the puppets from FANTASTIC MR. FOX in this new interactive feature from VanityFair.com. (Pictured: A preliminary character design for Badger, by Félicie Haymoz.)

And read young Grace McManus's essay about being on the New York premiere's red carpet and what it was like to actually meet Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) in the flesh. 

Scholastic

Young Grace McManus wrote an essay about her experience from the MR. FOX premiere's red carpet in New York City. She covered it as a Scholastic "Kid Reporter."

"I saw paper markers on the sidewalk. Each had the name of a TV station, a website, a newspaper or a magazine that was also covering the red carpet... The Scholastic Kids Press Corps was right next to The New York Times! I was worried that I had to compete with so many famous reporters. But I was also lucky. The stars’ assistants brought all the main actors over to me because I was the only kid there. (Once in a while, you get a break for being short.)"

Vanity Fair

Read "How the Puppets From Fantastic Mr. Fox Were Made" - and click through their slideshow. We've included some of the slides below with captions.

"Once Anderson had decided that his sixth feature film would be a stop-motion animation version of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox... he called on some of the best names in the puppet-making business... Based in Manchester, Ian MacKinnon and Peter Saunders first teamed up 22 years ago on a stop-motion version of The Wind in the Willows. Since then, they’ve collaborated on countless television commercials and  some of the most successful stop-motion feature films in memory, including Chicken Run, The Corpse Bride, and Coraline. But despite their experience, they found Anderson’s project to be particularly daunting..."

Below: "MacKinnon and Saunders's team constructed steel, ball-and-socket armatures, which are like articulated skeletons that allow the animators to control the characters’ movements with extreme precision. This is the armature for the character of Ash, Mr. Fox's son."