Nicos Livesey directed this animation, having experience with embroidered animation from this music video.
They wanted to link to Russia’s design history without defaulting to the typical Communist design sense, so decided to use tapestry…and were dedicated to keeping the animation real. Each second of animation is 12 and 1/2 embroidered frames.
From Creative Review’s writeup “The resulting film sees some of football’s most memorable moments reenacted in a way that we’ve never seen before. More than 227,000 metres of thread were used to create over 600 unique frames of tapestry, that if laid end-to-end would measure over 1,200 metres in length. For those who might be itching to see it for real, the idea will also be realised in a seven metre-long tapestry that will be put on public display, with moments from this year’s competition added to the tapestry after the tournament’s completion, creating a historical record of the 2018 World Cup.”