Have you seen The Boxtrolls yet?
If you’re wondering how they made it (are those puppets or is it all CG?) check out the latest article on the Cinefex blog, in which I talk to the visual effects team from LAIKA animation studio and learn about the magic behind the movie.
Here’s a brief extract:
In the LAIKA lexicon, hybrid filmmaking means taking a stop-motion film and expanding it visually beyond the confines of the animation stage.
“As a genre, stop-motion is typically confined to smaller environments and a limited number of characters,” said Emerson. “With hybrid, the idea is to use technology to open up these worlds, and do things that you wouldn’t typically do in stop-motion, like have large crowds, or big effects, or wide vistas.”
The hybrid approach prevails in broad action scenes, such as the chase sequence in which Archibald Snatcher drives frantically through the streets of Cheesebridge, while Eggs and his Boxtroll friends slide perilously across the town’s rooftops. “Where the characters are landing on roofs and kicking up tiles, all that is hand-animated and in-camera,” revealed Emerson. “The rest of those environments — the hundreds of other buildings, the landscapes, the skies and the fog — all of that is computer generated.”
Graham Edwards 