ANIMATOR - FABRICATOR - MODELER
FAMILY THREADS
(2025)
"Family Threads weaves together the untold stories of one small Icelandic family through delicate woolen stop-motion vignettes. Each scene is stitched together with yarn to bring to life moments of love, laughs, and losses."​
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Family Threads is a short film I animated and fabricated with music composed by Katrina Rushing and narration by multiple of my own family members. I created this film for the opportunity to hear more about my family. As my Icelandic is not fluent enough to interview my family members, I sent my mother, who is the interviewer throughout the film, to Iceland for the goal of collecting as many stories as she could. In the end, she recorded anecdotes from my grandfather, great-uncle, great-aunt, and a few family friends. Together, they told stories from their childhoods in the 1940s and 1950s in Iceland. I set out to recreate these stories using stop motion and, a medium very dear to Icelanders hold dear, wool. Wool is a staple in Icelands culture and many of those family members lived and worked with sheep their whole lives. In the film, all appearances of yarn are real, authentic Icelandic yarn.
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Scroll below to see some behind-the-scenes and the creation of the backgrounds, puppets, and props.
This film includes over 20 props and about 8 backgrounds. All props and backgrounds are created with needle felting and shaded with pastels. The props and puppets are flat on one side to account for the top-down camera. A couple of puppets, such as the horse head, have a simple wire attached to the back for a greater range of movement.
The most prominent props are the hand puppets that feature in multiple points during the film. The hands were first created with an armature made of aluminum wire. They are then wrapped with wool and needle-felted down. More bulk with wool is added to create the form of the hands. Larger needles are then used to imprint dents and lines within the palms and fingers. To bring the last bit of life to the puppets, pastels are used in the groves to add dimension and blush. They have full mobility and can recreate lifelike motions.