Chapter VIII · Character / Physical Making

Freddi Yeti

My own studio since 2017: a growing cast of needle-felted monsters, the animations that give them personalities, and the workshops where I teach people to make their own.

Character design
Stop-motion & animation
Teaching

Freddi, two feet tall and entirely wool.

Animation supercut — 2D shorts and stop-motion from the Freddi Yeti world. Sound on.

The cast

Three orange-red H-shaped felted monsters with eyes on stalks and open mouths, on a wooden table — A hoard of huddling Hectrix

A family of five brown felted Bigfoot creatures with startled expressions — The Lil Biggie family

A large green felted frog creature with a red tongue, climbing a branch on a white wall and holding a felted fly — Auggy Boggy

Close-up of a small felted fly held in a green felted hand — Uggy Buggy, up close

Freddi Yeti wearing a tiny black leather jacket, standing on a bar in red light — Gar, in a leather jacket

Freddi Yeti waving on a railing in the Presidio with the Golden Gate Bridge behind — Freddi at the Presidio

Small white felted yeti posed mid-leap in front of a large blue celestite geode — Freddi and a celestite geode · photo: Nash Bellows

A tiny felted brown bear-skin rug on a shelf with a handwritten tag: Handmade felted bear skin! — Hand-felted bear-skin rugs, sized for a dollhouse

In motion

The Eye of the Beholder — stop-motion loop

Freddi, overwhelmed — stop-motion loop

How they’re made

Process timelapse — a minute of sculpting with a felting needle.

Rows of felting needles standing in a foam block, their tips painted different colors, with paint pens and a finished Hectrix on the table — Needles in a foam block, tips painted by size.

A small system, even here. I paint the needles by size so I can grab the right one mid-sculpt without stopping to check.

Every character starts as a sketch and a personality before it’s wool. The same instinct runs through my teaching kits: design the thing, then design how someone else learns to make it.