Where the project stands
The Felt Lighthouse is an original short that is still in development. We want to be clear about that up front: there is no finished film yet, and this page is a working diary rather than a release announcement. We are sharing it because the making of a stop-motion film is half the fun, and because it shows how we build puppets and sets from the inside out.
The story is simple. On a small rocky island lives a mouse who keeps the lighthouse. One stormy night the lamp begins to fail, and the keeper has until morning to keep it burning for a single fishing boat still out at sea. It is a story about small creatures doing big, quiet jobs, which is a theme we keep returning to.
So far we have a locked story outline, a first pass of storyboards, a finished hero puppet and a lighthouse that is about two thirds built. Test shots are under way.
Building the keeper
The mouse keeper is our most detailed puppet to date. Underneath is a ball-and-socket armature, a small steel skeleton with joints that can be tightened so they hold a pose frame after frame. Each joint is set to a slightly different tension. The shoulders are loose enough for fine gestures, the hips are firm enough to hold the puppet upright on a sloping floor.
Over the armature we built up a soft body from foam and batting, then stitched on a skin of thin wool felt. Felt is beautiful on camera. It catches light in a soft halo and hides the tiny shifts that happen when an animator touches a puppet. It is also unforgiving. If a seam is visible on the first day, it will be visible on every frame, so our puppet shop made three test skins before stitching the final one.
The keeper's head is sculpted from a lightweight resin with a felt covering, and the face uses replacement eyelids and mouth shapes held on with tiny magnets. Those magnets let an animator swap an expression in seconds without disturbing the rest of the pose.
Clothing is real fabric, cut down to scale: a knitted sweater made on fine needles, a waxed-cotton coat with working buttons the size of a grain of rice. Every piece was weathered with paint and fine sandpaper so it looks like it has been through many storms.
The lighthouse build
The lighthouse is being built at roughly 1:8 scale, which makes it taller than most of our crew's desks. The tower is a timber frame skinned with thin card, layered with paper and painted to look like whitewashed stone that has been scrubbed by salt and wind.
Inside, the tower is hollow and split into removable sections. That lets our animators reach the keeper as he climbs the spiral stairs, and lets the camera look into rooms that would otherwise be sealed. The stair treads are individually cut from offcut timber and each one is slightly different in height, a detail nobody will ever notice and everyone will feel.
The lamp room at the top has a working light: a small LED source inside a hand-polished lens made from layered acrylic. We can dim it, flicker it and swing a shadow across it, which is essential for a story about a failing lamp.
The island itself is still a rough foam carve. It will be finished with sand, crushed stone and paper-mâché rocks once the lighthouse is in place.
Test shots
Test shots are where a puppet proves itself. Our animators have been running short exercises with the keeper: a walk cycle across a sloping floor, a look up toward the lamp, a shiver in a gust of wind. Each test teaches us something about the armature, and we adjust joint tensions and skin seams between sessions.
We also shot a lighting test inside the lamp room, using a fan and a sheet of rippled acrylic to throw moving water reflections across the walls. It was the first moment the film felt real.
A test shot is not about beauty. It is about finding out, as early as possible, what the puppet and the set will let you do.
What's next
Next we will finish the island, build the storm effects, complete the animatic and lock the shot list. Storm effects are a big question. We are testing practical rain made from fine fishing line and sculpted water made from tinted resin, with a small amount of digital compositing for spray.
When the film is finished we will share it properly. Until then, this page will grow as the lighthouse does. If you are a co-production partner interested in original stop-motion work like this, we would be happy to talk.