Cold Hands

 Everyone knows you need cold hands to make great pastry...

Cold Hands
3 minutes | Frame-by-frame animation | Mixed media | Dark humour

Cold Hands is a short animated film about love — with a dose of dark humour, melancholy, and a lot of graphite powder, it follows a woman quietly unraveling inside a stagnant marriage, distracting herself with recipes, routines, and the comforting textures of domestic life.

Created using frame-by-frame animation, blending pastels, pencil, and graphite powder to build a world that feels soft and warm on the surface but emotionally claustrophobic underneath.

Made during my first year at the Royal College of Art, Cold Hands is a wry look at emotional inertia, coping mechanisms, and the sharp edge hiding inside soft spaces.

Cold hands equals warm heart - that's what I say... Harold doesn't agree.

Harold hates my cold hands... and my cold feet. He doesn't care too much for my warm heart either.

BA-DUM-CHhhh.

Cold Hands
3 minutes | Frame-by-frame animation | Mixed media | Dark humour

Credits: Story, Design, Animation - Kate Balchin ; Sound Design - Kate Balchin; Sound Mix - Mike Wyeld; Actor: Kristin Hutchinson