The lightweight cameras with interchangeable lenses were perfectly suited for the production's five teams and 50 units, providing a great deal of flexibility. Two of those years were spent in the animation phase, a process which used more than 60 Canon 5d Mark II cameras to capture more than 400,000 frames of animation. Production was once again housed in Laika's Oregon-based studio, now encompassing 151,000 square feet, and took three years from script to screen.
#TOP STOP MOTION ANIMATION MOVIES FULL#
Though Coraline was their first full in-house production for the studio, ParaNorman was the first film that was based on an original story, one cooked up by co-director and writer Chris Butler. And though ParaNorman was the second stop-motion film to be shot in 3D-after the aforementioned Coraline-it was the first to use a 3D color printer for the puppets' faces, reducing the inconsistency of, and labor-intensive need for, hand-painted expressions. ParaNorman provided a number of firsts for Laika. But to ramp up the production process with the aid of modern technology, the puppets themselves were largely 3D-printed. Some of those people, like Althea Crome, who spent her time knitting puppet-sized clothes with needles the width of a human hair for Deborah Cook's costume department, or Georgina Haynes who supervised puppet fabrication, painstakingly crafted everything you'll see on film. The 140,000-square-foot warehouse was divided up into 50 lots, encompassing 150 stages/sets, which included a miniature Victorian mansion (in triplicate to allow for multiple scenes to be animated simultaneously) and a 40-by-60-foot long apple orchard.Īt any given time, 28 of the 35 employed animators were actively working, but the height of the production saw upwards of 450 people serving to bring all facets of Coraline to life. Now set up in Laika's home studio in Oregon, which would be home to the movie's three-year production journey to the screen, Coraline was shot in stereoscopic 3D, basically doubling the amount of shots needed with each snap taken from a slightly different angle this was a first for a stop-motion animated feature. The production studio stepped up in a big way on this one, keeping in mind everything they'd learned from previous films but also pushing the envelope along the way.
This is all to say that attention to story, style, and design was clearly paramount for the new Laika feature from the get-go. Selick brought the adaptation to the studio after meeting with Gaiman he also invited Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi to draw up some concept art for the film. Laika's first feature film in earnest is one that adapted Neil Gaiman's award-winning novella with writer-director Selick at the helm. With that in mind, we take a look at the history of Laika Entertainment and their filmmaking evolution to see how far they've come and make a case for why their future is brighter than ever. What we look for is the clear presence of hands-on filmmaking, a moving story told in a way that only stop-motion animation can bring to life, and moments which have us asking, "How on Earth did they pull that off?" Through a combination of years of development, investment in advances in both 3D printing technology and computer-aided design, and a bold, ambitious approach to filmmaking, Laika has managed to reinvent themselves with each and every feature film they've released. And with the studio's upcoming feature Kubo and the Two Strings poised to open in theaters on August 19th, there's every chance in the world LAIKA will have another $100 million earner and awards-contender on their hands.īut to fans of stop-motion animation-a charming and unique style of filmmaking of which Laika has fashioned itself after-box office numbers and awards hardware don't necessarily rank high on their metrics.
#TOP STOP MOTION ANIMATION MOVIES MOVIE#
Despite earning a Best Animated Film Oscar nomination for all their feature work-2009's Coraline, 2014's The Boxtrolls, and 2012's ParaNorman-stop-motion movie studio Laika Entertainment has yet to reach the recognition level or box office performance status of animation houses like Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, Sony Pictures Animation, or Walt Disney Animation. However, Laika does have their three original features in the top seven box office takes ever for stop-motion animated features.
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