cos

... and ET did win "visual effects" that same year. It wasn't a terrible choice, since it did have great visual effects, but in the same year as the Dark Crystal, it just underscores the omission. Sometimes you can shrug something off on technicalities, but this was just too big to not be completely embarrassing. And as far as I could tell at the time, not only weren't they embarrassed, they didn't even seem to notice that they should've been.

Edit: BTW, I've seen one of the actual Skeksis, at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta. The clothing on top of the "puppet" portion of of the costume was impressive and elaborate in its own right, more so than anything I saw in Ghandi.