![]() Link/Susan…and the animator has to be constantly aware of each character’s unique personality." Apparently, Schiff and LAIKA has "played around with a few of them cross-mingling but this is the first time we've ever had all five interacting with one another."Īs for that lead animator? That's Anthony Straus, and this project and the ability to get his hands on every LAIKA character was a full-circle moment for him. Coming up with ways to play each unique personality against one another lends itself to a really fun group dynamic in the piece. Coraline acts and responds differently than Kubo or Mr. These characters are who they are in their films and we will not stray from that. They are not actors who play these characters. Schiff also touched on the challenges of putting together so many unique characters and keeping "each character’s personality and actions on style with who they are at their core. We want it to enhance the animation medium, to engage our fans, to add to their holiday celebration, and to stay with them long after viewing." ![]() ![]() We still want a viewer to be profoundly affected in some way by everything we put out into the world. We know that our movies have a lasting impact on audiences and we wanted to create something shorter…but no less impactful. This piece, only 29 seconds in length, still took 10 full weeks of production from concept to end of production today and involved every production department. We have extremely high standards at the studio and we applied them to the Friendgiving piece as stringently as we did on our five Oscar nominated films. But anything we create has to meet the incredibly high bar that LAIKA has established. But as a studio we are more and more committed to creating shorter form content that our fans can enjoy online and on our social channels. We can’t wait to see them come to life."Our films take years to create and work on our latest project is ongoing. Or at least has the potential to be.” So many puppets, so much potential. It’s a beautiful story, it scares me, and it’s going to be an extraordinary piece of cinema, I think. “There’s never been a film made like this in our medium. “This film is not a family film, at all,” Knight says. “Whatever we’re developing, be it animation or live-action, it’s going to be something that’s emotionally resonant, that blends darkness and light and humour and heart.” Another future project that will lean into the darker end of that mixture is stop-motion movie The Night Gardener, a “neo-noir folk tale” from a script by Ozark’s Bill Dubuque, aimed squarely at a grown-up audience. “It’s a thriller with soul,” Knight says. The studio is also preparing to move into the world of live-action with lethal hitman story Seventeen, based on a John Brownlow book. It’s so hard.”īut Wildwood isn’t the only ambitious swing that Laika has on its roster. And then you bring all the kineticism you would have in a live-action action movie. Moving a physical object a frame at a time and trying to give it life, that’s its own challenge. Stop-motion films tend to look like they’re shot on a table-top, because they are. And you’ll tell me when the film’s all done if it did. “We’re starting to chip away and tentatively stepping into, like, ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God, how are we gonna do this?’ But I think it’s going to work. “It’s the single most difficult thing we’re tackling on this movie,” Knight tells Empire. It follows a young woman, Prue McKeel, who comes across a mystical, enchanted forest – and it’s set to feature a huge battle sequence, the likes of which Laika has never attempted before. They’re in the midst of more than a decade of development on their new stop-motion feature film, Wildwood, which Empire can confirm is finally due out in 2025.ĭirected by Knight, it’s a fantasy epic based on a book by The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, and is set in and around Laika’s home city, Portland. Speaking to CEO and often-director Travis Knight, plus other members of the animation and production team, we meet the Laika team at a particularly exciting, challenging time in their history. To get under the hood of just how a stop-motion feature film comes together, Empire visited one of the most exciting studios in the business, Laika – behind the likes of Coraline, Kubo And The Two Strings, and Missing Link – for our brand new issue, on sale tomorrow. Stop-motion animation is a notoriously difficult medium – the tiny movements, the many iterations of a single puppet character, the time-consuming nature of creating smooth action and evoking emotion from a piece of clay.
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