Worried about the amount of screen time your kids are getting? You might not mind so much if your little ones are sat down in front of one of Little Woolly Vision’s charming animations.
The Greenwich-based stop motion studio creates videos with hand-knitted characters and props, set to classic nursery rhymes.
Founded by professional animator Ed Hartwell, and author and designer Sarah Simi, the studio is approaching four million views on its YouTube channel, with its videos for ‘Old Macdonald Had a Farm’ and ‘Ten in the Bed’ especially popular.
We speaks to Little Woolly Vision co-founders Ed Hartwell and Sarah Simi to find out more…
Holly O’Mahony (HOM): What came first with your company? The stitched characters or the animations? Or were they always planned to exist in tandem?
Little Woolly Vision (LWV): All the characters and sets are made specifically for a particular film and are always made from wool, fabric and felt.
The production process starts with scripts, storyboards and sound recordings which get turned into a rough-drawn animation called an animatic.
The puppets have a metal pose-able skeleton that is then padded and covered in fabric in order for them to be positioned and posed for the stop motion animation.
HOM: There’s something nostalgic about your woolly characters that makes them stand out from the more typical computerised animations seen these days. Was this intentional?
LWV: All our animations are made in the most traditional way possible.
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All the puppets, props and sets are handmade and animated by hand. The fabrics used for the sets and puppets have a natural movement and fuzziness to them, which we think gives the films a nostalgic and charming quality.
HOM: You set your animations to nursery rhymes which have been around for years and passed down through generations. Why?
LWV: We wanted to choose very popular and familiar nursery rhymes that are sung by children all over the world, both at home and at playgroups.
We like to update and add our own interpretation too though, for example we made Old MacDonald a woman when the character is typically portrayed as a man.
HOM: Your latest animation, The Wheels on the Bus, features the surprise addition of a jellyfish. How did this come about?
LWV: The songs often contain a twist or silly element because Ed added them in when singing to his children to make them giggle.
If you are singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ with a toddler on your lap and start shimmying and singing “jiggle jiggle jiggle”, you are guaranteed a big laugh – and what’s more jiggly than a jellyfish?
HOM: Are your stitched characters available to buy as toys?
LWV: No, but we hope to have them available in the future. We are currently planning a range of books which can be enjoyed alongside the animations.
HOM: What do you hope little ones and their carers get from watching your animations on YouTube that they might not find from other videos?
LWV: Firstly, we wanted to provide parents with better quality content. Children watch nursery rhyme videos over and over again, and if the adults are watching and engaged, they will enjoy songs with their kids instead of having to endure them.
Secondly, the animations are inspiring for a child’s creativity: watching our videos can spark the imagination and encourage children to draw or make puppets of their own. Ten minutes of screen time can even expand into hours of arts and craft fun.
For more information about Little Woolly Vision, visit their website or watch their videos on YouTube
