Jim Henson's Muppets were brought back to life thanks to a new interactive Google Doodle meant to celebrate their creator on what would have been his 75th birthday.

The doodle feature showcases six digital Muppets, taking the shape of the Google logo, but allowing users to manipulate them by clicking the hand buttons below the Muppets. The doodle was created in partnership with The Jim Henson Company.

The digital puppetry system behind the animation is a combination of proprietary hardware and software that provides real-time performance of 3-D generated characters that are directable like actors, according to The Creature Shop.

It's so fitting since Jim was such a prolific doodler, said Mel Horan, art directors at the Jim Henson Company. His creative process began with a single doodle and evolved into these amazing characters he brought to life. We tried to capture that and merge it with Google's logo.

Henson, who passed away in 1990, created The Muppets and Sesame Street; he also had a hand in giving life to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dinosaurs and Fraggle Rock. His son, Brian, who is now the Chairman of his father's company, took to a Google blog Friday to reminisce about his father.

Jim often had a little lesson about the important things in life: How to be a good person. How to believe in yourself and follow your dream. And above all, how to forgive. If anything was stolen from one of use - like when the car was broken into - he would always say, Oh, well, they probably needed that stuff more than we did.

Jim was clearly a great visionary. But he also wanted everyone around him fully committed creatively. If you asked him how a move would turn out, he's say, 'It'll be what this group can make, and if you changed any one of them, it would be a different movie, Brian said.

Every day for him was joyously filled with the surprises of other people's ideas. I often think that if we all lived like that, not only would life be more interesting, we'd all be a lot happier.

Google