Hi Chris,
After watching the video you shared, it looks to me that for the Puppet Warp tool to work the character has to be built in Illustrator. The lines used to draw the mantis' are being manipulated by using anchor points at the joints. I think the only way to accomplish what you're looking to do would be to rebuild the character in Illustrator which would take a lot of time.
Doing this in Photoshop might be a little easier, but you'd still need to put in a good amount of time editing the character.
Thanks for reaching out,
John
