Zeke and Alice

A couple of years a go I worked on an animated TV series called Dogstar. It is a futuristic tale of space, plucky kids, ruthless bad-guys and a lost ship full of dogs. I still can't believe how lucky I was to get a job animating a science fiction cartoon. It actually had spaceships in it, and robots! Two of my favorite things. Once I even got to animate one of the characters knitting.

I wish I could show you some of the stuff I did, but alas, the second series has not been shown on TV yet. So all the footage is under wraps until Channel 9 finds a gap in their schedule. You can check out Series 1 (I think it's on DVD), I didn't work on that one though. What I can show you is my crochet versions of the characters. Here are Zeke and Alice the robot pilots of the missing Dogstar.

One of my favorite characters to work with was Zeke. He is convinced he is a human, not a robot, which means he gets to do a heap of fun stuff. I made this doll to take along to the Christmas Party. We were supposed to dress up as our favorite character, but I don't really like dressing up.

Alice is the other pilot of the Dogstar. She is much more sensible and constantly tries to keep Zeke in line. I have to say working with Alice was a lot of fun too.

If you want to find out more about the show visit the official Dogstar site. You should also check out Scott Vanden Bosch's blog. He designed all the characters for Dogstar, as well as directing the series.

Doctor Who

The plan is to crochet miniature versions of all 11 regenerations of Doctor Who. I know it's been done before and there are heaps of patterns on the internet. But they haven't been done by me.

Anyway here are the first five Doctors.


First Doctor - William Hartnell



He's supposed to have checked pants, but the check pattern I made up came out as diagonal lines. I think the stripes are distinguished.

Second Doctor - Patrick Trouton



The first doctor to be in colour. His pants are supposed to be tartan. To do it properly I would need to make a much bigger doll. Instead I just used the different colours in alternating rows. I guess you could call it pixelated tartan.


Third Doctor - Jon Pertwee



He still needs some neck detail. Also, although this regeneration was partial to capes I don't think he ever wore one exactly like this. By the way, curly hair takes ages to sew.

Fourth Doctor - Tom Baker



This is where things got complicated. Making the head, body and jacket was easy enough. The curly hair was tricky, but I only had to do the bits around the hat. What took most of the time was the scarf. I miniaturized the pattern from *the Doctor Who scarf website*. I had to repeat the pattern twice as I messed up and the scarf wasn't long enough. It took three evenings to make, but I think it was worth it.

Fifth Doctor - Peter Davidson



Another tricky one. Mostly because I made the coat the wrong colour to start with. On the up side it meant I could practice putting the red edging on.