Our subsequent Showcase choice is one other testomony to the best way creatives rise to difficult moments with further creativity and, usually, an excellent higher outcome. These days within the animation world, nothing has proven that higher than the pandemic. “We launched our Kickstarter a pair weeks earlier than the world began shutting down,” animator Andrea Love informed us about funding her movie Tulip–a candy tackle the traditional Hans Christian Andersen fairytale Thumbelina.
“We had imagined bringing on substantial assist,” Love went on, “however ended up doing the lion’s share of the work ourselves.” Ultimately author Phoebe Wahl wasn’t even in a position to go to for arms on assist, so the pair needed to collaborate remotely. Love then turned pregnant simply as she started animating, so her deadline turned decidedly extra agency: “I imagine I completed animating 10 days earlier than my due date. It was all the way down to the wire!”
Nicely, there’s nothing like agency constraints to provide some actually stellar work and Tulip isn’t any exception. Delighting viewers with a fascinating world of vivid coloration and pleasant miniature particulars, this can be a movie that may particularly attraction to lovers of superb handwork and crafting, in addition to these followers of magical fairy tales of previous. Watch it together with your little ones and it received’t be the one time you do–that is a simple movie to fall in love with.
We requested Love how the movie got here to be. “Phoebe Wahl got here to me with the concept of adapting Thumbelina again in 2019,” she stated. “We favored the concept of mixing her storytelling and illustration fashion with my fiber world and animation. We received a pair producers on board who supplied preliminary funding, after which we launched our huge Kickstarter marketing campaign to lift the remainder of the cash.
“Phoebe took the lead on script writing and character/set design. We developed the animatic collectively, after which fabrication and animation occurred in my house basement studio. I work primarily with wool & felt, however we additionally included paper mache set items and little miniatures from the vintage retailer. There was a complete of 15 totally different units and 20 puppets, utilizing 3 totally different scales. Pre-production and animation occurred over the course of 1 12 months after which postproduction took one other 6 months.”
When it comes to showings, Love informed us, “Tulip had an incredible movie pageant run, which included an viewers award on the New York Worldwide Movie Competition, and screenings at Annecy and LA Shorts Competition…The movie additionally received a theatrical deal in France, the place it’s screening in a program for teenagers that celebrates the pure world.”
Tulip is obtainable for lease or to purchase by means of Vimeo on Demand.
To search out out extra about Love’s miniature needle-felted puppets, take a look at this superior time-lapse video on the making-of:
