Welcome back to Toonzone’s “Two Strings Tuesdays,” the day dedicated to special content posted a week in conjunction with the upcoming release of LAIKA Animation Studio’s latest feature film Kubo and the Two Strings (coming to theaters on August 19, 2016). In case you missed our first installment, check out our roundtable interview with director Travis Knight and producer Arianne Sutner.
LAIKA, the Oregon-based animation studio that’s a pioneer in its craft of stop motion, is celebrating their tenth anniversary with the debut of their fourth film, Kubo and the Two Strings, which is set to hit theatres this August. Toonzone News and other members of the press were invited to visit them as they were hard at work on the film, with 64 active film units over 77,000 square feet of stage space.
Aiming to do something new and innovative with each movie, LAIKA has decided to tackle the concept of an action adventure film in Kubo and the Two Strings, setting it against the backdrop of an ancient and mythical Japan. Starring Art Parkinson as Kubo, a young man with a magical instrument that brings origami to life, he is joined by Beetle (Matthew McConaughey) and Monkey (Charlize Theron) on his quest in an original story. Production manager Dan Pascall, who has been with the studio for ten years, explained the new challenges this production brings and how each department tackles their tasks as he lead our tour. After screening the trailer and some not quite finished film footage for us, we were on our way.
Costume Designer Deborah Cook places fabric samples on the costume boards for animation studio LAIKA’s epic action-adventure KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Steven Wong Jr Laika Studios/Universal Pictures
First stop on the tour was to see Costume Designer Deborah Cook. The Kubo story room was wall to wall costume boards filled with character designs, fabrics, materials, and a load of image references. Cook’s team researched periods of Japanese history, digging into everything from formal wear to battle armor, to get the look right. The look and feel of the Japanese Yayoi Period, the Heian Era, and the Kamakura Period all went into inspiring the clothing. Kubo’s mother and the Sisters wear what’s called a Karaginu jacket, or a fancy looking kimono. Cook explained that the costumes need to be tied and folded to match the shape of the puppet. They are weighted and have their own skeleton of piano wire and spring woven in so the clothes can be shaped to appear to float in the wind. The designs are incredibly intricate: the capes the Sisters wear have 482 interlocking feathers. Kubo himself wears both flowing clothing, like his hakama pants, and samurai armor. The armor is laser cut metal plates, constructed of heavy metals. Everything is made in house, and vintage fabrics are laser etched to make them look period specific.
To see what goes into making the actual character puppets, we headed over to the Model Shop and spoke with Georgina Hayns, Creative Supervisor of Puppet Fabrication. Hayns demonstrated that each puppet begins with a skeleton, called an armature. The skeletons are made from tension steel and put together with ball and socket joints and hinge joints to allow for posability. With the vast landscapes of the film, they wanted to make sure their puppets had unique silhouettes to stand against that. Kubo, measuring at nine and a half inches, was the first character they created to solve the issue of having a separate armature for the kimono and sleeves. He is also given wired hair. A total of 30 Kubo puppets were made and used in filming during production. Other main characters have multiple puppets, while a background character will only have one or two.
Beetle puppet on display in the Puppet Room for animation studio LAIKA’s epic action-adventure KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Steven Wong Jr Laika Studios/Universal Pictures
A unique challenge for this film in particular were the Beetle and Monkey puppets, the two non-human characters. Beetle, as expected, has an exoskeleton with multiple arms and was created to look like he was wearing samurai armor. His body is composed of 82 separate molded parts, some that slide and others that are outside armature. Monkey’s challenge came in the fact that she wouldn’t move like a human and is covered in fur. Elastic muscles were added to the armatured spine so she could stretch like a monkey, and then a fur fabric suit was built on top of that. Kubo also features origami characters. The team had to learn how to make origami and then deconstruct it, only to reconstruct it in a way that it can be properly animated. Normal paper was torn apart too easily by the animators, so they used Tyvek for the puppets, which were then dyed, painted, and given an armature. The puppets, which are tiny in the film, are enlarged to 700% scale and are only in proportion to each other, not to the other puppets.
Having seen the construction of the clothing and the puppets, the next stop was to visit Brian McLean, Director of Rapid Protoype. Replacement animation is the what stop motion is built on, and the core concept hasn’t changed much since it was first invented. However, LAIKA uses computers and 3D printing to take the concept as far as they can, which they have been doing since Coraline. A character’s face is animated in a computer and then made physical with a 3D printer. They create the top half of the face (brows) and the bottom half (mouths) separately. These halves are combined to give characters a multitude of expressions. Brows and mouths are held onto the puppet with magnets and then the seamline is digitally erased. Boxes and boxes of brows and mouths are kept safely once they are printed. Eggs, the protagonist of The Boxtrolls, had 1.5 million different expressions through mouths and brow combinations. Kubo, who has 22,000 faces, easily beats that with a possible 45 million expressions.
The process of coloring is constantly improving. Characters on Coraline were white resin which was then hand painted. ParaNorman added powder based color printing to the process, where colored liquid glue is sprayed onto the white powder, mixing the two together. They realized this couldn’t work for Kubo’s non-human characters, so they had to improve on the design of the Stratasys printing hardware. With Kubo, they began to use plastic which has white as a separate color that’s not mixed with the others. In addition to white, they actually had translucency as a color, so clear plastic can be used for the Moon Beast The plastic color printing is jetted down as droplets. There are 18 million droplets per cubic centimeter, and the eye of the viewer mixes it when its zoomed out. The plastic coloring is done for the animal characters, while the human characters continue to use the powder color method.
Animator Justin Rasch works with Monkey on the Long Lake set for animation studio LAIKA’s epic action-adventure KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Jason Ptaszek Laika Studios/Universal Pictures
The Moon Beast itself presented another challenge in addition to its coloring. While all characters have faces separate from their puppets and are created in different departments, the Moon Beast is face and body as one. He became the first puppet fully printed in 3D. Mylar birthday balloons were cut up and glued onto his back to make him shimmer and glitter under UV lights.
Next stop was The Props Department, which covers all the non-human stuff. Production Designer Nelson Lowry explained that the woodblock prints and art of Kiyoshi Saito were used as inspiration and reference to ensure the film would incorporate visual elements of Japanese craftsmanship. Much like the Costuming Department, Props laid out artwork and pictures for reference and even had a cultural consultant. Heavy textures and stencils give objects their look. Basket props are woven, and burned wood is made to actually look like it’s been through a fire. Some props are constructed while other props, like swords, helmets, and other objects that are supposed to be metal, are designed through rapid prototyping and printed with the 3D printer. Consistency was aided by a huge prop table containing all the objects laying next to each other, where they could be compared to each other easily. Kubo is unique in that there are cross-overs between characters, props, and even sets, so departments had to work together in several cases.
Model maker Molly Light works on the Garden of Eyes set for animation studio LAIKA’s epic action-adventure KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Steven Wong Jr Laika Studios/Universal Pictures
The tour then went from stage to stage, and we got to see a handful of sets and what a stop-motion animated feature looks like as its being shot. Kubo is a movie with a lot of action and set pieces, so naturally, they pushed their limits, and it’s impressive even by LAIKA’s standards. Animation Rigging Supervisor Ollie Jones and David Tolsky met us on the Garden of Eyes set. Kubo faces an eyeball monster created from steel mesh fabric and backed with an array of LEDs. The giant eye had to be a one to one scale with Kubo, and the challenge there was figuring out how it was going to be operated. Using an articulated cable system attached to motors, the creature’s moves are programmed into a computer. The crew used a bowling ball as a makeshift mouse, which allowed them to move the creature’s head. Even this scene was shot one frame at a time, so movements had to be carefully measured.
Other sets included a boat, a village, a fortress, and a Hall of Bones. The last location boasted LAIKA’s largest puppet ever: a 16 foot tall skeleton. The skeleton is top heavy and needs to be held back by a rig, but is also moved through ball and socket joints. Close shots use a 100% scale of all the characters, and the Hall of Bones’ wall is a geometric pattern that is expanded through VFX. Wider shots use smaller scale versions of the skeleton and the other characters.
We spoke with Director of Photography Frank Passingham, who further explained what goes into making a LAIKA film. Animators target to shoot 4 seconds a week, which may not sound like much, but a lot goes into what they do. A scene needs to be blocked to get the timing right, the camera needs to be placed, and the shot needs to be put in focus. Once everything is set up, they’ll do a rehearsal to time out the puppet’s position to make it stays in sync with the camera. Sets are complicated as there is a lot of dressing between shots, all of which has to look exactly the same for continuity purposes. Scenes are shot by angles and not story order so they don’t have to take more time to reset the figures. Smaller shots are taken before larger ones, and a single shot could take months to film.
While Laika prides itself on stop motion and physical, practical effects, they aren’t completely devoid of computerized visual effects. VFX
Production Designer Nelson Lowry working on a forest set for animation studio LAIKA’s epic action-adventure KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS, a Focus Features release.
Credit: John Leonhardt Laika Studios/Universal Pictures
Kubo Director and Laika President/CEO Travis Knight and Producer Arianne Sutner sat down with us and did a little Q&A in the theater and then we watched a visual demonstration. VFX Supervisor Steve Emerson, who has worked on every LAIKA film, gave us a visual demonstration of how he blends CG with the practical effects. He learned to do these kinds of hybrids on ParaNorman. An example of a hybrid scene would be anything with a crowd in Kubo, where there are VFX people standing side by side with puppet figures. VFX is also used to extend physical sets and make them look larger. CG is brought in later to enhance what’s already there, as with water scenes. In creating the ocean, the crew begins with artwork and creates what they can, putting down a grid of wires. Fabric is then draped over the grid and then topped with a dense tarp. Physical paper cut outs and patterning was used for the foam. The rest of the water is CG, and when Kubo’s hair moves underwater, it’s computer replacement. They get as much as they can from 2D, so computer effects are always secondary to what’s physically there.
Once again, LAIKA proves that stop motion is a form of animation that’s not only a still viable method for storytelling but also can go further and further in what it can do. Kubo and the Two Strings promises to be the most impressive action film ever done in stop motion, and if LAIKA has done its job, audiences will be too swept up in it to realize that these are physical puppets being moved around.
Toonzone would like to thank the wonderful crew at LAIKA for opening its doors to us and Fumi Kitahara of the PR Kitchen who supported our set visit. Kubo and the Two Strings opens August 19, 2016. Stay tuned for our next installment of Two Strings Tuesdays coming next week.
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