MEDIA students at a Darlington college "are go" after learning the ropes from an animator for the Thunderbirds.

Alan Perry went from clapper loader to director on the cult 1960's super-marionette series including Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet.

Now running his own production company, the Yorkshire-born animator took time off to share his experiences with national diploma media, moving image and multimedia students at Darlington College of Technology. College tutor John Gibb worked with him several times from the 1980s onwards on a variety of film projects.

Mr Gibb said: "Alan has a tremendous amount of experience in the industry, which he was able to share with the students. He once built a set for puppets and used a 4ft live alligator with models of differing sizes for all the various perspectives.

"It was a fascinating session, explaining how he used to hide the puppet strings with a grey spray and how he used to blow things up for real.

Media student Simon Weightman said: "I'm making an animated film at the moment called The Doughnut Man and was able to ask Alan loads of questions."