Andrea Love is an independent animator and director based in Port Townsend, WA. A self-taught animator specializing in stop motion, she runs a full-service animation studio from her basement. From there, she does commercial work, as well as short documentary films and passion projects like “Cooking with Wool,” a sweet stop motion piece we found on Instagram. The piece features human fingers cooking in a tiny woolen kitchen, including an electric burner that turns from green to red when hot, and butter that melts in the pan. In short, Love animates wool.
“I like to make short personal projects experimenting with the different ways to animate wool,” she explains. “The technique is called needle felting and it involves shaping wool with a barbed needle. I love the fuzzy aesthetic, and feel like the possibilities are endless. Everything in this video is made out of wool or felt, and is built over rigid insulation foam. This was a weekend/evening project, done over the course of three days.”
When asked about the inevitable challenges animators face, Love replied, “It is very challenging working with tiny bits of wool, but also amazing how much detail can be achieved on a small scale when you consider that it is just tiny clumps of fur. Aside from the technical challenge of pulling it off, this project was a delight to work on.”
Next Love plans to make another cooking video– this time cooking up pasta with red sauce, one of her guilty pleasures. “But most of my time is spent working on a 7-minute short film called “Tulip,” she said. “It’s an adaptation of Thumbelina I’m making with children’s book author/illustrator Phoebe Wahl. We hope to finish the film by Summer 2020. This film also relies very heavily on the needle felted aesthetic.”
With such a fuzzy, charming look, we’re warmed by the thought! Staying tuned…