Nao Kobayashi

Nao Kobayashi designs and creates puppets and costume for theater, TV and film, museums, institutes, and entertainment. 

Originally from Japan and recently in northern California, she holds a MFA in Costume Design and Technology in Theatre, TV and Film from San Diego State University, a BA in Technical Theater from Sonoma State University.  Over the past decade she has worked on various projects with dance, theater productions, fashion and entertainment companies, as well as artworks with independent artists, dancers, musicians and performers in Japan and artists from other countries. She currently works as a fabricator at Images in Motion a TV puppet company in Sonoma.

In puppetry, she utilizes skills of sketch, sculpture, fabric modification and fabrication, and martial art and dance as movement and body understanding. She often works in creative teams with interdisciplinary characteristics, by expanding ideas to cross borders, as well as deepening and refining details. ​