Our latest Showcase pick has been called a celebration of animators from around the world. This music video for Coldplay’s Feels Like I’m Falling in Love was directed by Raman Djafari and caught our attention for its stop motion contribution by animator, Isabel Garrett, as it opened up a world of tactile fancy in the middle of the piece.

“Raman’s concept for the whole video was story of two souls connected through time and space,” Garrett told us, “it’s a really beautiful concept. I love Raman’s work and really fell in love with the idea when we chatted about it.

The animator was especially excited about turning his designs into stop motion, a process that ultimately led her to the her choice of materials. “Needle felting is such a great technique, especially with a short turnaround—it’s a great way of getting a lovely tactile finish and allows for lots of tiny details.

“Luckily we were able to work with Cat Johnston and Rachael Olga Lloyd, who are such amazingly talented makers and directors in their own right. Cat made the lovely puppets, and together Cat and Rachael made such a beautiful set in a really short space of time.”

Once the time-intensive process of felting and fashioning the puppets was done, it was time to build their colorful realm and get them to them move through it. “An obvious challenge was making the butterfly creature fly through the world,” Garrett said. “Luckily, we had the help of the brilliant Robin Jackson who helped us rig the characters to fly through the set. We also made lots of flowers at different scales, to make the scene feel big and overgrown. Everything you see in the film was made by hand, so it was quite time consuming!”

Next up for this animator? “I’m working on a few projects with BlinkInk at the moment, and also co-directing a wildlife documentary which I’m excited about- it’s a little step in a new direction for me, a mix of live-action and stop motion.”