Hidden away in a cluster of nondescript buildings on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, the employees of Laika Studios are making something magical. Literally. The stop-motion studio behind Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings is preparing to release its most ambitious film yet, and it’s pushing the limits of the art form in every way imaginable to tell a high-fantasy story full of magic and adventure.
Earlier this year, Polygon was invited on a press trip to Laika headquarters for an early look at Wildwood, which releases in theaters on Oct. 23. Based on the bestselling children’s fantasy novel by Colin Meloy, Wildwood tells the story of a young girl named Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) who leaves her home in Portland and travels into a fantasy world to rescue her baby brother after he’s kidnapped by a murder of crows. (That scene is in the trailer, and it’s terrifying.) The film is directed by Travis Knight (Masters of the Universe, Bumblebee, Kubo and the Two Strings), who also serves as CEO of Laika.
Knight wasn’t at the offices during our visit, but we got a first-hand look at how Laika is bringing the world of Wildwood to life through 3D-printed models, stunningly detailed miniature sets, and epically staged battles that would impress J.R.R. Tolkien himself. We also spoke with multiple department heads to understand how the entire team works together to pull off something no other studio seems capable (or interested) in even attempting.
It’s impossible to boil down a full day of interviews, demonstrations, and behind-the-scenes previews into a single article (especially since Laika wouldn’t let us record any photos or video), but here are four mind-blowing details from the making of Wildwood that I’m still thinking about more than a month after my trip to the fantasy world of Laika Studios.
1. Welcome to Wildwood
Wildwood is the first Laika movie set in Portland, where the studio is based, and the team took advantage of that situation as much as possible. That includes multiple scenes set in iconic Portland locations (Voodoo Doughnut even gets a nod), along with a big emphasis on the city’s pride and joy: its sprawling, wooded parks.
Much of the film (and the book it’s based on) takes place in Forest Park, a massive green oasis in the northwest corner of the city that stretches for more than eight miles and features more than 80 miles of trails and walking paths, including the popular 30-mile Wildwood Trail that gives the story its name.
“I’ve never worked on a film that takes place where I live,” said Nelson Lowry, who leads production design at Laika and lives near Forest Park.
To bring Forest Park to life, Laika sent its employees into the park to photograph and scan every inch of it before recreating their favorite parts on raised platforms in the studio.
The studio also used all that recorded data to try something new: extending the physical sets with VFX. For Laika, blending handmade stop-motion with modern filmmaking techniques is nothing new, and Lowry told us the blending of materials here isn’t particularly noticeable.
“It doesn’t take you out of the film,” he said.
I didn’t want to have floating mountains with waterfalls.
While there was some temptation to lean into the story’s fantastical elements, Lowry resisted transforming Forest Park into something unrecognizable.
“The act of just walking through the woods is pretty magical,” he said. “I didn’t want to have floating mountains with waterfalls — no offense to anybody who does that. Now that I’ve seen the film in its totality, I’m so glad we did that. It keeps it on Earth in some way without being too much fantasy.”
2. Bringing the General to life
One of the centerpieces of Wildwood is an extended sequence where Prue rides on the back of a massive eagle called the General (voiced by Angela Bassett). To bring the character to life, the team at Laika created three versions of the General: one specifically designed to allow its wings to fold up for non-flying scenes, and two more for flight. (Fun fact: Underneath layers of fake feathers and plastic, the bird’s retractable neck looks like a large, silver slinky.)
We have not taken our feet off the gas for really pushing this technology.
The biggest version of the General was attached to a gimbal to create dynamic flight movement, with a camera attached to a second, circling gimbal. This setup was used to film the main flight sequence, with one animator working alone for days on end to bring the story to life, one frame at a time.
To create the illusion of flight, Laika also deployed a few clever tricks. For example, the General’s design features over 3,000 feathers, each one made from laser-etched silk with a wire running through the tip. This means the animator could adjust every single feather to create a sense of speed and movement — even if that’s not exactly true to life.
“It’s rare that you get that much feather movement in an actual bird,” said animation supervisor Brad Schiff, “but in order to feel the scale with Prue sitting on top, it made sense to have a little bit of movement going on with it.”
Another big area of focus was Prue’s hair. For most of the movie, it hangs past her shoulders and swings freely, which isn’t exactly easy to animate and requires multiple, posable strands with tiny wires running through them. Eventually, Schiff came up with a solution.
“I approached Travis [Knight] one time and I’m like, ‘Dude, this hair’s a pain in the ass. Could we put it in a ponytail for the General scene?'”
The ponytail version of Prue’s hair still has some movement, but it’s actually just a single rotating cylinder where the ponytail part connects to the rest of her head. If you’re not paying attention, it looks totally natural, but it’s the kind of thing that you can’t unsee once you know it’s there.
3. 140,000 faces
Dating back to Coraline in 2009, Laika’s biggest innovation has always been the combination of 3D printing and stop-motion animation. This melding of modern technology and classic technique allows the studio to whip up thousands of different versions of each character’s face to match every possible expression. The studio never looked back.
“That was groundbreaking at the time and it really pushed performances to a whole new level for stop-motion animation,” said Brian McLean, Laika’s director of rapid prototyping. “We have not taken our feet off the gas for really pushing this technology.”
For Wildwood, Laika 3D-printed an eye-popping 140,000 faces, a record for both the studio and presumably for the entire artform. (The studio’s previous film, Missing Link, boasted 106,000 face models.)
“We have a Guinness Book of World Records for the most number of 3D-printed faces in a stop-motion animated movie,” McLean said. “I don’t know if anyone is competing in that, but we nailed it.”
Every character goes on an emotional journey.
Once the faces are printed and prepared, the animation can begin. Each face plate has magnets glued to the inside, which attach to another set of magnets inside the head of the character models.
That part is easy, if a bit repetitive and painstaking. The most difficult part of animating all those faces comes down to the eyes. While each model’s eyeballs are fully movable, the process animators need to use to achieve lifelike expressions might make you feel a bit squeamish.
“They are taking an extremely sharp X-ACTO blade and stabbing the eye and moving around the eyeball and the eyelid,” McLean said. They’re doing this to get eye lines. They’re doing this to get blinks. They’re doing this to get squints.”
“This curvature of this little thin plastic eyelid, we dial that in for months, because we know that animators have to get the most subtle performance out of these eyeballs.”
To make things even more difficult (and even more rewarding), Laika no longer reuses any of those 3D-printed faces for more than one shot. While the studio did sometimes cycle through the same pile of expressions on earlier films like Coraline and ParaNorman, Knight made the decision a while ago that every facial expression needs to feel totally unique, just like it would on an actual human being.
“The truth of the matter is, no director wants to be told they have to use the same smile at the end of the movie as they used in the beginning of the movie,” McLean said. “Because every character goes on an emotional journey, a character arc.”
4. An epic battle out of Lord of the Rings
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Image: Laika -
Image: Laika
Wildwood culminates in a massive battle between multiple warring factions, including an army of bipedal coyote soldiers. Laika built five different sets to shoot the scene, including west and east slopes where the rival forces prepare to attack. The studio even constructed working mini-trebuchets that shoot exploding cannonballs full of molten lava in the film. (That part is CGI.)
In total, there are over 3,000 characters engaged in the fighting via a mix of practical models and digital doubles, kind of like the orc armies in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
“This film is so epic that we had to figure it out,” Lowry said. “Is VFX cheating? We built 136 locations and hundreds of puppets. I don’t find that to be cheating. It is seamless, actually, the VFX and the animation, which is the holy grail of digital work.”
Wildwood releases in theaters on Oct. 23.