The result is a Laika look that doesn’t quite resemble anything else. No other company has poured so many resources into making its puppets perform. The company’s most obvious innovation is the expressiveness of its puppet faces. The animators meticulously craft objects - puppets, sets, costumes and props - that are tiny works of art in themselves, photograph them beautifully and combine them with digital tech to tell bigger stories, with more nuance than has ever been possible with stop motion. Laika’s innovations aren’t primarily in digital imagery, but in the physical realm. That exquisite animation they do is brilliant, and obviously all the crafts skills - model-making, lighting, sets, costumes - are fantastic,” says Aardman director Peter Lord.ĭriven by the vision of CEO Travis Knight (pictured), Laika has applied as much high-tech innovation to its films as any filmmakers working today, including “Avatar” auteur James Cameron. “God knows, everything about their productions is amazing. ![]() (Execs are virtually doubling their Hillsboro, Ore., studio space in order to move to one feature release per year). The studio’s contributions can be seen in everything from the complexity of the stories it tells to the subtlety of the performances within them, from the minutest level of artistic detail to their staggering big-picture ambition. It’s core principle remains the art of crafting physical puppets and moving them one frame at a time. ![]() Though the stop-motion technique of animation traces to the earliest days of cinema, no company has done more than Laika over the course of a single decade to innovate the medium. Today, the Laika name has become synonymous with another pioneer: the Oregon-based animation studio responsible for creating “Coraline,” “ParaNorman” and “The Boxtrolls,” and which turns 10 this year. ![]() The real-life Laika - a Russian street dog who became the first animal launched into orbit - lasted mere hours in space, but paved the way for humans to eventually follow in her tracks.
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