Animation is one of the coolest and most fun jobs in life, but it’s also one of the most demanding and stressful ones. Making a character move frame by frame can drive anyone crazy. Especially if you’re using one of the hardest and most traditional techniques like stop-motion.
Well, that is what Laika, an animation production house has turned into their trademark. They do incredible films in stop-motion They might not sound as much as Pixar but the few films they’ve under their arms are incredible. They did the production of the Corpse Bride. Some of their films are Coraline, ParaNorman, Box trolls and their latest Kubo And The Two Strings.
“Kubo and the Two Strings” is one of the best animated movies of the year.
It shows us a young boy, Kubo, fighting against some evil forces that want his remaining eye. It has tons of family values and self-accepting messages, as the characters can be considered to be “broken”. In his quest, Kubo faces a giant skeleton in one scene.
Travis Knight was the director and producer of the film.
To create this gigantic enemy, Knight said that the team decided to apply the same principles they would to any of their other puppets, but just on a larger scale.
The guys from Laika did an amazing job with the film in general.
But in what they did an excellent job was in animating the 15 feet tall skeleton monster puppet. Especially if you consider these puppets are made of silicon, clay or silly putty.
The hard work and time they invested in this massive creation were impressive as they usually make figures between 6 and 15 inches.
And as Charles Greenfield, one of the animators said “This has a whole new set of different difficulties — access, physical space, weight. So it was really physically demanding, (…) A slow day would be eight frames a day in 12 hours … A fast day? 18 frames.” So just think about how much time they spent on creating the whole movie.
This movie is amazing, it has some deep stuff that would make any “grown up” enjoy the movie as well. The movie comes out in Blu-ray and DVD on November 22