Home Channels Events Two Strings Tuesday: From Coraline to Kubo: A Magical LAIKA Experience

Two Strings Tuesday: From Coraline to Kubo: A Magical LAIKA Experience

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Welcome to the last entry in Toonzone’s “Two Strings Tuesdays,” the day dedicated to special content posted a week in conjunction with the upcoming release of LAIKA Animation Studio’s latest feature film Kubo and the Two Strings (now in theaters). For our earlier installments, check out:


Between their ten year anniversary this past December and the premiere of their fourth feature film, Kubo and the Two Strings, stop motion animation feature film studios LAIKA is doing an excellent job building name recognition among the general audience with its library of films. Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), and The Boxtrolls (2014) have all been nominated for Academy Awards, and Kubo and the Two Strings promises to achieve the same kind of success and notability. To coincide with both events, LAIKA and Focus Features presented an exhibit highlighting all their films at Universal Studios Hollywood’s Globe Theatre earlier this month.

“From Coraline to Kubo: A Magical LAIKA Experience” is an immersive exhibit that creates a journey through the studio’s history, Laika_Experience-0689complete with actual puppets and sets used in the films, clips from the films and behind the scenes footage of cast and crew alongside studio facts, critic snippets, and quotes from the folks at LAIKA.

A quote from Travis Knight, LAIKA CEO and Director & Producer of Kubo welcomes guests by stating that LAIKA is about bringing people together. The exhibit starts with a walk down a spiral corridor, transporting the visitor into the world of the 2009 film Coraline, populated by puppets of Coraline and her family and the house set.

Coraline impressed critics and audiences by being the first ever stop motion animated film to be conceived and shot entirely in Stereoscopic 3D. Two pictures had to be taken for each frame, using a camera with a left eye and a right eye. Coraline was also the first feature film to use replacement faces, in which a 3D printer is used to print out a character’s upper brow and lower mouth which are combined to create facial expressions. Coraline’s 52 different sound stages were the most ever used for a stop motion animated feature.

Turning the corner from the Coraline display leads into Norman’s room from ParaNorman. A quote from Knight regarding ParaNorman explains that he enjoyed having the ability to solve a problem with either older techniques that have been used since the inception of stop motion or high-tech solutions that they’ve worked out themselves.

Laika_Experience-0715Within Norman’s room is a scene of him in high school with other characters, a display case of ParaNorman puppets, the characters inside the van, and Norman’s house itself. Further quotes from the crew line the walls. ParaNorman writer/director Chris Butler talked about how he relates to Norman; Deborah Cook, Creative Supervisor of Costume Design’s quote boasts the fact that every costume was treated and hand-dyed; and Nelson Lowry, Production Designer, adds that he took care to include little details into the backgrounds of scenes.

Past the cozy, modern room of ParaNorman is a room that’s wall to wall boxes, appropriate for showcasing The Boxtrolls. Puppets all rest comfortably inside boxes, with the exception of Lord Portley-Rind, perched atop a grand staircase and villain Archibald Snatcher, seated atop his fearsome Mecha-Drill. The Mecha-Drill itself stands over 5 feet tall and weighs over 75 pounds, making it the biggest stop-motion puppet rig ever built. Laika_Experience-0804

Among the boxes and puppets lies the underground lair of the Boxtrolls, who use a pipe system to travel from their world to the surface. A quote from Arianne Sutner, LAIKA Head of Production, says that LAIKA is a family of artists who work together to bring the script to life and always exceed her expectations. Knight, who served as Producer & Lead Animator on the movie, points out that The Boxtrolls is unique in that it’s LAIKA’s first period piece. Another quote of his explains that they do make mistakes but integrating those imperfections into the work makes it seem more authentic. The Boxtrolls broke records by having 79 sets and over 20,000 handmade props, making it the biggest stop motion production ever.

Laika_Experience-0921The final and largest exhibit area is everything Kubo and the Two Strings. The first item on display from Kubo is a tray of replacement faces. In February 13, 2016, LAIKA was given a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for their innovation in Rapid Prototyping process, which began with Coraline. Back then, Coraline had 6,300 face replacements and a possible 207,336 face combinations. A decade later, and Kubo has 11,007 unique mouth expressions, 4,429 brow expressions, and a total of 23,187 faces. There were over 48 million possible facial expressions he could make.

Knight says Kubo represents a “seismic shift in the art,” citing the scale of their sets, action scenes, cinematography, facial performances, and fabrics as examples of how hard every department worked to bring this film to life.

In terms of aesthetics, each LAIKA film uses a unique look to give it its feel, and Production Designer Nelson Lowry referenced Japanese woodblocks for Kubo. The Sisters’ wear a costume inspired by female samurai warrior Tomoe Gozen, and there are 861 laser-etched feathers on each of their capes. The Moon Beast was LAIKA’s first entirely 3D-printed puppet and was made of 881 parts. A quote from Oliver Jones, Animation Rigging Supervisor of Kubo, discusses the bowling ball mechanism they used to move an eye puppet and how they can use this device on future productions.Laika_Experience-0857

The Kubo display included a set with Kubo and Beetle, origami birds suspended from the ceiling, and the boat Kubo creates. Multiple boats had to be constructed, and each was covered with paper which was laser-cut into 250,000 leaves. They were worked on by three carpenters, four landscape artists, four model makers, two scenic artists, metal fabrications and two machinists over the course of four months. The boat sequence took 19 months to shoot. Phil Brotherton, Assistant Art Director of Kubo, explained that the boat was designed to look like a traditional cargo boat of the era and appear as though it was folded through origami.

Laika_Experience-0954The Hall of Bones, which encompassed 360 square feet of set, was made up of 380 12” x 12” resin tiles painted to look like jade. Each tile took 75 minutes to make. The Skeleton, which is LAIKA’s largest puppet ever, had 70 unique swords implanted in its skull and was made from over 1,000 bones for the armor of the torso. In some scenes, a 1/6th scale skeleton was used, which still ended up standing at 2.5 feet tall. Knight referenced the skeleton fight scene from Jason and the Argonauts by Ray Harryhausen as an inspiration for that particular sequence.

Concluding the exhibit are some final quotes about LAIKA, detailing how much they have done for their medium. Knight makes note of their talented team, praising how they have stayed together since Coraline and have only grown since then.