Oh yeah and by the way.
I wrote scott radke about his awesome marionettes and asked him about how he got into puppetry. Here is what he said:

"i took some art classes. mostly drawing.
started making puppets just for the heck of it and as a gift for my wife at first.
now i am doing more sculpture based stuff. my puppets were not really meant for performances thought they have been used for that.
they don't move all that great just neat to look at. in really marionette making the main focus is on movement and mine are base more on appearance."

It makes sense, especially once you look at his drawings, because his figures seem to live in a world of their own. Even in static photographs, his marionettes have so much movement and expression.

check out his stuff at scottradke.com (the picture above is taken from his website)