Model Making Research: Alisa Stern

Alisa Stern is an Animation artist who lives in New York and specialises in stop motion. She has produced work for Nick JR but it is her Doctor Puppet animations that I like the most, which I stumbled across when I was browsing the internet/YouTube. The short series is based on the BBC's Doctor Who and I'm going to talk about it briefly because I think the design and the production of her puppets is beautiful.

Alisa Stern's 11th Doctor (Matt Smith)

To start with, I like that the puppets actually resemble the human character in the series. I also like that they seem quite realistic to say they are puppets, despite having very thin limbs. Though, having said this, you don't necessarily notice this straight away due to the clothes that the puppet is wearing, which are actually made out of old articles of clothing which I think is a great touch. 

Due to how much the short series "blew up" on YouTube, Stern released a video explaining how she made he puppets, which I found to be incredibly interesting. 

The Making of the Doctor Puppet

The way she makes her puppets actually isn't that much different to the way we were shown during our tutorials, but it was nice to see how the two techniques differ. She goes into a lot of detail about the process and the different materials she uses so I will definitely make sure to keep this video in mind if I ever come to make puppets in the future, as I can see it being a very useful "guide", especially when it comes to making clothes or adding finishing touches.