When the team at Jigsaw set out to bring the underwater world of Amazon MGM’s new docuseries: Octopus! to life, they turned to the talented animators at Mighty Oak to complement the live-action segments of the series, which focuses on the fascinating lives of octopuses and their devoted fandom. Narrated by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the series dives deep into the science and behaviors of this awesome creature and allows some of it’s biggest fans (including celebrity Tracy Morgan) to sing its praises.

At the heart of it all is Doris—a strikingly detailed, handcrafted Giant Pacific Octopus brought to life by the team at Mighty Oak. Doris helps guide viewers through key moments in the octopus life cycle: including birth, growth, mating, reproduction, and death, gliding alongside her live action counterparts with grace and charm. 

We spoke with Shape and Shadow’s Hayley Morris, Octopus! Stop Motion Design & Fabrication Lead, and Mighty Oak’s Michaela Olsen, Octopus! Executive Creative Lead, about their process:

“Michaela and Mighty Oak approached me to design the visual world of Doris—both the environments and the puppets, after seeing my music video, Bounce Bounce, for Hilary Hahn and Hauschka,” Morris told us. “Having grown up partly in Maine, the ocean has always held a deep personal meaning for me, so I was thrilled to expand on the creative language I developed in Bounce Bounce and collaborate with the team to shape a visual identity for Octopus. 

“Creating the Doris puppet has been one of the most fulfilling projects of my career. I wanted her to resemble a real octopus while also possessing subtle human traits—something in her form and presence that audiences could emotionally connect with as they followed her journey. I aimed for her surface to feel rich and tactile, realistic from a distance, yet on closer inspection reveal delicate details like lace and yarn that emphasized her handmade origins.” 

This is pulled off rather impressively, as there are live octopuses featured in the film itself. To have your work go up against the real thing and hold its own is a hurdle many animators would shy away from, but not this one.

“My creative process is material-driven,” she went on. “The character often emerges through the act of making. During the design phase, I sourced wool, yarns, lace, chiffon, and other textiles to prototype Doris’ head and tentacles. Through experimentation, I discovered a blend of materials that captured the texture of octopus skin and the graceful, undulating movement of an underwater creature. 

“That layered, ethereal quality carried through into the final build, which I constructed over an intricate ball-and-socket armature crafted by Maxwell Sorenson. We experimented with various materials for the suckers—fabric, buttons, beads—but ultimately landed on a combination of crepe paper wrapped around beads with touches of yarn. It struck the perfect balance of whimsy, texture, and believability.

“For the sets, I collaborated with Minkyung Chung to create rock formations and underwater flora using familiar, tactile elements that—when combined—felt both imaginative and grounded in reality. We used beads, fabrics, lace, crochet, papers as the main materials to construct the sets. I also gathered materials from the Vermont woods where I live. My three-year-old daughter and I scavenged for mushrooms, seed pods, and mosses, which we blended into the sets to add naturalistic detail.” No wonder the finished product retains a sense of magic.

When we asked about the inevitable bumps in the road, Olsen named their biggest challenge as trying to figure out how to tell the entire story of Doris’s life, from birth to death, and then—surprise! She meets Mike and has babies, so suddenly there are even more octopuses. 

“We had about 10 minutes of stop motion to do all of that,” she told us. “With limited time and budget, while still making it feel epic and expansive. One of the tricks we leaned on was shooting about 75% of the stop motion scenes using frontlight/backlight setups so we could isolate elements. 

“We also shot the scenery separately from Doris so we could reuse as much as possible. Doris was flipped, shrunk, and color corrected in many different ways. We reused a lot of the same shots and loops more than once. There were some limitations with the lighting, since we wanted her in different sea depths, but thanks to our DP, Anthony Galante, we figured out some clever ways to repurpose the elements.

“We composited Doris into whatever scene we needed, and we did the same with the environments—shooting, reusing, and rearranging little pieces of rock and seaweed made by fabrication artist Minkyung Chung. If you spot the same patch of seaweed 20 times… that’s no accident. Huge credit to our amazing post team, led by Sabrina Cheney, for pulling it all together so beautifully.”

So how did it all come off so well? “A lot of the polish came at the end,” Olsen said, “but we had incredible stop motion animation to build from. I’m still in awe of how the tentacle animation turned out—animating eight legs is not easy, and it definitely took some time.” She credits Sorenson’s custom ball-and-socket armature with Doris’s ability to be animated for many months by stop motion animators: Anthony Galante, Matt Christensen, Mikail Ekiz, and Victoria Arslani. 

“We also had some very cool panning scenes,” Olsen continued, “that we shot using Matt’s handmade motion tracking rig. Those take all day, so we saved them for special moments—like the introduction of Baby Doris, which is the first time we see the underwater world.

“The whole process was pretty experimental—we actually started with a stuffed animal octopus, background projections, and bathtub tests, and ended up in a really amazing place. I’m super proud of what we pulled off!” As you should be.

Doris premiered May 8, 2025 exclusively on Amazon Prime.

For more behind the scenes on Octopus! check out this bts reel: