Hello, and welcome to Muppet Wiki! Well done on the Van Helsing page, but unfortunately, it doesn't fit with our policy we created a couple years ago, which is that only one page can be created for any Henson Company project after 2004 (which discludes pages for characters, soundtracks, etc.; take a quick look here for more details), so I hate to say it may very well be deleted. Don't let this discourage you though. Check out Muppet Wiki:Things you can do if you want to help in creating pages or adding references here. Again, if you have a question, you can ask me or another admin. Thanks!
Sorry, I was not aware that there was a policy that only one page can be created for any Henson Company project after 2004 -- especially since there are separate pages for puppet and human characters from Five Children and It, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Producers, and other Henson Company projects after 2004 elsewhere on this wiki. So I did not think the Creature Shop puppets from Forgetting Sarah Marshall would be off-limits here. Sorry.
There's both a policy and also a distinction we make between projects made by the Jim Henson Company, films with Creature Shop Effects, and characters who fall into Category:Creatures. We're admittedly generous post 2004 as long as the character falls into the Creature category, which is based on aesthetics. Van Helsing isn't a Creature, isn't a Muppet, and appears in one sequence only, so any pictures and details could be added to the Forgetting Sarah Marshall page (nothing wrong with a subsection). We deleted human characters from Hitchhiker's (Arthur Dent is there only because he was also referenced by name), no characters from The Producers except Adolf Pigeon (he probably could be merged though, but it is an actual Creature.
In fact, the discussion (which is admittedly very long, and at times was heated) finally led to concensus on what to cover, including what exceptions could be made. As I noted on your wall, as far as actors, that was discussed at Category talk:Creature Shop Movie Actors.
Our guidelines and policies have evolved over the years, and I can definitely see why this is confusing. Basically though, even with Creature pages and categories, we're still primarily a *Muppet* wiki. So anything directly related to the Muppets, Sesame Street, etc. is never a problem., Anything post 2004, yeah, that can be tricky, so feel free to ask on a talk page first.
Also, here's a suggestion for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. If you look at other pages (and this even includes Where the Wild Things Are, which has major Creatures, but the talk page consensus was just to list them on the page), you'll often see a character gallery. You can do that, upload pictures, and we use gallery notes headers ({{GNH|Character name}}, followed by performer if known and other notes). That way it provides the info directly relevant and most interesting to Muppet Wiki, and in this case since it was all one sequence with the puppeteers visible, a side by side gallery makes the most sense anyway.
Yes, it is confusing. I respent your rules, but I don't quite get the logic behind them.
Why do some puppets created by the Creature Shop after the Muppet sale (such as Adolf Pigeon and Marvin the Paranoid Android) get pages, but other puppets created by the Creature Shop after the Muppet sale (such as Van Helsing and the Succubus) not get pages? How is that decided? I would think the Creature Shop's puppets for Forgetting Sarah Marshall would be considered more closely related to the Muppets than Vogons or Uncle Albert.
Again, read what I said about Creatures. They fit the aesthetic for Creatures, as we defined it on Muppets vs Creatures (and linked to on Category:Creatures). Van Helsing's not actually a Creature, even if the Creature Shop built it (the page discussed that distinction at length) especially since post sale, the Creature Shop is effectively Henson's puppet making arm for just about everything, including the puppets that would have been classed as Muppets but can't because they sold the name.
We've had discussions also on stuff like Me and My Monsters (which are also more Muppety than Creatures, but not Muppets anymore; annoying state of affairs due to all the sales and chopping up, but there it is) and all of those characters were merged there. So again, feel free to cover all of those on the Forgetting Sarah Marshall page!
Ok, I kind of understand why you don't cover soft puppets (formerly known as "Muppets") made by the Creature Shop after 2004. But why do you cover individual anamatronic puppets (or as you call them "Creatures") made by the shop after 2004? They seem equally non-Muppet.
Because we have Category:Creatures to cover them. That's why, and because the Shop had been making them as an outside supplier for projects before the sale anyway, so it made less of a difference. We discussed that, and one of our admins/founders wanted to dump those as well, two of us were against it since we already had the category, so we reached an agreement. But we haven't been in a huge rush to add any more post-2004 characters to that category if they can be handled on one page. We may merge some of the leftovers eventually but it was agreed that they were fine right now. I have work in awhile so I can't find the discussion pages for you right now, but as I indicated, this was the result of multiple conversations over time, but some of them are scattered now, so it is tricky for a newcomer to catch up. Sorry! But I hope this has explained some things.
