The puppets were constructed with foam and aluminum wire armatures.  The shape of the bodies were needle felted over the armatures, and small costumes were sewn by hand.  In order to convey Tulip’s tiny size compared to the human world, we used 3 different scales.  This resulted in human puppets ranging from 3 inches tall to larger than life-size. 

 Sets were constructed atop rigid foam bases, using wool, felt fabric and paper mache.  Aside from a couple props from the antique store, everything was made by hand.  Since we were working in such a small studio with limited resources, we constructed only one set at a time, captured the animation and then moved onto the next set. 

The Tulip production, with over 15 sets and 20 puppets, occurred entirely in Andrea’s 500 sq. ft basement studio.  Our goal was to create a film that brought together our artistic aesthetics and storytelling styles.  Pre-production began at the end of July, 2019, with the writing of the script and character designs. We then roughed out the entire film as an animatic- a shot by shot breakdown edited to the script.  All our talented actors recorded their lines in a voiceover studio in Vermont, and we were then able to begin the physical production process.

Stop motion is created by capturing one still frame at a time with a DSLR camera, then slightly moving the puppet before taking the next photo.  The sequence of photos gets strung together to create movement.  Tulip was filmed at 12 unique frames per second.  In order to retain the handmade aesthetic, no green screens were used.  Everything you see onscreen was done in-camera.  When puppets are suspended in the air, they are held up with wire rigging, which is then removed in post-production.  Andrea was able to produce between 5 and 10 seconds of animation in a day, depending on the complexity of the shot.  We wrapped up the animation in July 2020, almost a year after beginning  our journey.