Matt Partridge Teams Up with TED-Ed for 90s-Inspired Animated Short: How Long Can Hair Grow?
Skwigly
London-based director Matt Partridge has collaborated with TED-Ed to release an exciting new 5-minute animated film exploring the fascinating science of hair growth. The 2D frame-by-frame animation officially launches on Thursday, 12th March 2026.
Using bold colours, dynamic camera moves, and nostalgic 90s influences, Matt transforms the biological life cycle of a hair follicle into a character-driven comedy. To make the educational content highly engaging, the story centres around a neurotic, balding Guinness World Record invigilator who is evaluating the real-life longest-hair record holder, Xie Qiuping.
I love designing weird and wonderful characters in my work and for this film, I leaned into some of the influences I had growing up like Rugrats, SpongeBob and Peanuts. I saw the main World Record Invigilator character as a sort of modern day Charlie Brown, still neurotic and blading even after all these years.
My immediate thought when I read the text, was that creating a short narrative around the subject would really help to make sure the audience could digest the information in a compelling way but also keep them wanting to find out what happens next in the story.’
I’ve always been fascinated by people who go for weird and wonderful World Records and the fact that these attempts are verified and judged by someone from the Guinness World Record.
I’m always really keen to add as much humour into the work as I can, whether that’s with the actions the characters take or adding by adding little jokes in the background.
A big comedy inspirations for me growing up were films from Aardman or episodes of the Simpsons so I wanted to make sure I put as many visual gags in this film as possible.
I’ve been such a fan of Ted-Eds work for years so it was great to finally get to collaborate of something together. I really enjoy both the wide ranging topics they cover, but also the diverse selection of directors they work with on each film. It’s always so interesting to see how each topic is dealt with by the filmmakers and how they take the information provided and transfer that into an engaging film for all age ranges.
Matt Partridge