Gadgetory

this is like a Studios the animation house responsible for the oscar-nominated films Coraline ParaNorman and the boxtrolls their upcoming film Kubo in the two strings is their biggest most complicated an ambitious feature to date it uses the biggest puppet they've ever made and the most sophisticated technology they've ever incorporated we went behind the scenes with some of Kubo's key personnel and looked at what Leica stands for and what it took to make Kubo happen our culture here there is something of an inherent restlessness in the in the creative culture we always want to challenge ourselves we always want to try something new we always want to tell new and original stories to dive into new genres to explore different aspects of what it means to be human and and we do it in kind of a strange way and that we are are styled our execution of the way we make our films is is a convergence of art and craft and science and technology stop motion animation involves building puppets and props and moving them around on miniaturized sets shooting their movement one frame at a time with high def cameras pushed close enough to make tiny things seem huge like I use the CGI to hide the armatures that support the puppets and to erase the seams in the puppets 3d printed faces but most of their effects work is done practically an in-camera by team of stop-motion veterans as you're developing a film for the first you know two three years all you're doing really is figuring out who these characters are what this world is what are the themes that you're addressing what parts of your own life are you weaving into the movie to give it resonance and meaning and then it's only once we feel pretty confident in our foundations that we start developing the film visual that we start think thinking about what the characters look like what does the world look like how are we going to bring this to life how we going to execute physically to make this thing happen each supervisors Department breaks down into teams that work simultaneously on a variety of production aspects at once across 72 different sets the sets rigging support character bodies are custom-designed and mostly built by hand once we've got the character design and the character lineup the first thing we do is sit with the director the head of animation and the production designer and we want to get three really important sort of things from them we want to get the director's vision of the whole film and really what the storyline for all of these characters is we want the production designer to give us the key sort of visually what is important on this one what is the pattern language and what is what line are we using using a straight line or using a curvy line to create our character and then of course the head of animation that person will know everything there is to know about these characters before we go into that room and they tell us what they want from that movie generally it's like we wanted to do everything angle really again again you know we are constantly trying to raise the bar we're constantly trying to redefine what we think is possible for the stop-motion medium and that is what makes it absolutely exciting and wonderful to get out of bed and drives you to get to work and you can't wait to get here but also causes for a lot of sleepless nights because you never quite know how you're going to solve the problem the fun thing about each show and also the stressful thing is the problems and every characters of line that we walk into on a film will have a whole line of problems usually about 24 24 puppets who will have 24 problems the monkey character needed to have realistic but poseable fur so the design team wound up coding fur fabric with silicone rubber they used a similar technique on Kubo and his mother who have really human hair on their heads coated with silicone butyl had to have a complicated armature that would support his armor plates but when a move so the rapid prototype department got involved in designing interior wireframes for the puppet rather than just working on the face and the costumes were meticulously researched and designed but because the fabric had to hold poses the clothing on the puppets is full of wires and tiny weights that hold each folding place on Kubo Georgina and her team started working extensively with laser cutting and etching the fabrics we always try to do as much as we can practically an in-camera and only through experience are we able to like make those decisions quicker and and we can look at something earlier the idea of it and go okay well I can tell you from experience what the problems are going to be from an animation point of view what the problem is going to be from a camera point of view what the problems are going to be from a set building point of view how much it's going to cost and then it becomes just a choice by the director and the producer with Kubo the effort to use practical effects including building immense sets that break apart so animators can access any part of them to which the characters these sets include multiple copies a huge sailboat that appears to be made of tiny leaves a snowy landscape covered in a crunchy foam that moves just like snow in the character step on it and it also involved making some giant robot eye balls so the rigging is changed immensely since Coraline has got a lot more nuances got a lot deeper into the actual puppetry and we've taken on a lot more automation and we're developing a lot more relationship with our most control departments the robots can also be controlled with a bowling ball interface from live interaction cooperation cross-platform has become a key discipline at Leica because when the designers or directors have creative goals they don't know how to meet mechanically they don't necessarily know which department will be able to solve the problem the films flying moon beast became an issue for several departments because it was such a detailed design it needed to glow and it needed to fly moon Beach was unusual just because it was asking people to exercise a muscle that they typically don't ever think about using and we're very familiar with working with different departments for different things but when you were thrust together on a common problem it was difficult just for little things like who's who's running it how are we who's what's the idea do we we go with and that was where like his sort of mentality really fell into place in order to achieve the the look of some of these characters on and Kouga on the two strings we knew we needed to try a different printing technology the powder printing technology was not going to afford us what the director wanted out of these characters so we had an opportunity because of our reputation within 3d printing industry to talk to 3d printing companies and start to see if they had anything in development our challenge within the RP department is to never allow the technology to dictate what we can do and that's I think one of the things that has made us so successful as a department because there was no ceiling we never knew what the limits of this technology was that whenever we would see a challenge or whatever we would see a character design we had a group of really talented artists and technician and wizards that were just willing to accept it and figure it out I love that aspect of it I still I'm you know I've been doing this for nearly 20 years and I still think it's as close to magic as anything that I've ever seen so much of the magic of Laika's movies involves the care and detail that goes into every piece it comes from their staffs experience and it comes from their willingness to make each project more ambitious than the last I worked on Nightmare Before Christmas in those days we would bring everyone together to make a movie and when the movie was over everyone would kind of just disappear and go their own ways find other jobs like is different we you know it's set up as a studio that will continue to make stop-motion animated pictures and there's a the consistency of it allows you to really refine your processes and really hone in how you end up making these movies and when you're able to refine the processes then the scale of the movies can get bigger because you're not having to reinvent every time you come back and then just the ability to constantly push the medium you know in new directions is exciting part we always strive to be as good as we can we always strive in our art to be perfect to be isn't to make these things as beautiful as powerful as they can but we are human after all and we always fail the entire film is filled with all different kinds of imperfections and failings and it's something you have to come to terms with and I think there is something beautiful about that I think that it's one of the things that makes stop-motion so unique is that inherent in what it is it's crafted by human hands and so it has that raw human quality it's frustrating sometimes it's maddening to work in this medium because of the imperfection but I think that's one of the things that makes it inherently beautiful and so we really embrace that side of it because it makes these things you