Are there any actual professionals here?

This is an interesting point. Today was the close of submissions to the review over the closure of VCA. VCA had the only puppetry course (postgrad/masters) in existence in the entire Southern hemisphere. Up until then, the only way professional puppeteers in this country learned was on the job. I can think of entire generations of puppeteers who are now no longer 'professional' because they can't live up to the standards of Terminal Pharmacy's limited viewpoint. Care to tell the guys who produced Walking with Dinosaurs that they're not pros? How about half the people who worked on Where the Wild Things Are? Quite often in the arts, there aren't even formal training facilities available in the first place. Your source for handmade shadow puppets at Puppets in Melbourne