Directed by Lauren Musgrove, UGLY SWEATER follows Ruby (Deja Monique Cruz), a high schooler who is determined to study astrophysics at an Ivy League college, who faces her crippling anxiety as it appears vividly in her dreams, prompted by a seemingly magical ugly Christmas sweater.
As lead animator on this film, it was my goal to bring the world of Ruby's dreams to life through the art of stop motion. My goal was to make Ruby's world feel inviting and intriguing, but with the possibility of triggering her anxiety at a flip of a coin -- and I wanted everything in the project to be constructed entirely out of knit and crochet materials, the world was not going to feel like a sweater otherwise.
With my team of two, and over the course of three months, I created everything from storyboards and animatics, concept art and rigged puppets, and brought Ruby's animated world to life for the ten minute sequence in the final film.
Take a look below at how this project went from thumbnails to a finished piece!
Here are some sketches, measurements, and concept art I made of the individual built out crochet animation puppets that was then sent on to my crochet specialist, Laela Jones, and my rigging specialist, Catherine Croft, as well as what their crochet puppet versions looked like!
Everything that was animated for these sequences had to be shot on a green screen so it could be incorporated with the pre-filmed footage of the actress acting on her own green screen. Here is some of the green screen footage before it went off to the VFX specialist, Arnold Aldridge.
Below is an edited sequence of the ten minutes of animation that made it into the final project!