{"id":602778,"date":"2026-09-17T02:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/602778\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T02:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:18:13","slug":"the-most-ambitious-fantasy-epic-of-the-year-has-been-5-years-in-the-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/602778\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Ambitious Fantasy Epic Of The Year Has Been 5 Years In The Making"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m looking at a box of faces. That sounds a little creepy, but it is a little creepy looking at the box of carefully arranged miniature resin masks that LAIKA visual effects artist Brian McLean is showing me, and a handful of other journalists touring LAIKA\u2019s labyrinthine studio in Portland, Oregon. For one: they don\u2019t have eyes, because they\u2019re designed to be magnetically popped onto a puppet of Prue McKeel, the teenage girl protagonist of Wildwood<\/a>. The fantasy epic is the latest feature film from the independent animation studio<\/a> co-founded by Kubo and the Two Strings (and now Masters of the Universe) director Travis Knight.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the great joys for me in doing stop motion is the sort of high-tech, low-tech [practice].\u201d<\/p>\n

Knight also directs Wildwood, though he\u2019s nowhere to be seen as we wander LAIKA\u2019s winding, slightly stuffy halls (it\u2019s Portland in the middle of July, so it can\u2019t be helped). Instead, we talk to the animators and visual effects artists of Wildwood as we\u2019re taken on a tour through the various sets. Here, a meticulous re-creation of a street in contemporary Portland; next, a cavernous medieval hall buried in the roots of a massive oak tree; then, a crumbling French ch\u00e2teau modeled after Portland\u2019s real-life Pittock Mansion; next, a sprawling battlefield littered with shattered cannons and shattered puppet bodies; and finally, a dense wood half-covered in shadows, the LED lights above being diffused by a gauzy white sheet and some laser-cut metal branches, giving the illusion of real leaves being cast on top of the resin trees. I know that it\u2019s all fabricated and built by human hands (and various other tools), but I can\u2019t help but feel enchanted by the whole picture \u2014 it feels real, like this wood sprouted from reality. But that\u2019s just the beauty of the tactile animation practices of LAIKA, which prides itself on keeping alive the traditional method of stop-motion animation, with a few high-tech tweaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the great joys for me in doing stop motion is the sort of high-tech, low-tech [practice],\u201d production designer Nelson Lowry says. \u201cIt’s just kind of fun to watch a movie that has some of the most cutting-edge visuals, and then there’s like chicken wire. That appeals to me a lot. And we really lean into that because this is more like live action than people realize, so much that we\u2019re building physical assets, to stages, and lighting them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Long Road to Wildwood<\/p>\n

An animator tweaks the hair of Wildwood\u2019s Alexandra puppet.<\/p>\n

LAIKA<\/p>\n

Wildwood, based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, follows Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a high school girl whose infant brother Mac is suddenly kidnapped and taken into the Wildwood, a mysterious and enchanted forest that lies just on the outskirts of contemporary Portland. Prue and her nerdy friend Curtis (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) venture into the Wood and encounter a place out of time, populated by talking animals, ancient soldiers, and a dangerous sorceress (voiced by Carey Mulligan). It\u2019s an epic undertaking unlike anything LAIKA has done before \u2014 but then again, so are most of its films.<\/p>\n

Wildwood began production in earnest in 2021, but has been in development at LAIKA, in some form or another, since 2011. It sounds like a slow and careful process because it always is for LAIKA: the studio has been dedicated to the art of stop-motion animation since its inaugural film, Henry Selick\u2019s Coraline, hit theaters in 2009. Nearly two decades and five films later, LAIKA is committed to using CGI as little as possible and sticking to the old-school stop-motion techniques; instead, it\u2019s focused on evolving its very specific brand of technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time we’re trying to find ways to get the best materials, the best technology, the best 3D printers, the best infrastructure to support what we have finally been able to achieve on Wildwood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCoraline was the first film that ever had 3D-printed replacement faces,\u201d McLean says. The technique of replacement animation \u2014 aka showing different facial expressions or sculpts by taking pictures of them and replacing them with another sculpt \u2014 is \u201cpretty old,\u201d McLean says, but for Coraline, the team at LAIKA sped up the painstaking process by using 3D printers to create these sculpts en masse.<\/p>\n

He continues, \u201cThat technique was groundbreaking at the time, and it really pushed performances to a whole new level for stop motion animation. And we have not taken our feet off the gas for really pushing this technology. Every single film that we have produced at LAIKA uses this idea of 3D-printed replacement animated faces. Every time we’re trying to find ways to get the best materials, the best technology, the best 3D printers, the best infrastructure to support what we have finally been able to achieve on Wildwood.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how did Wildwood take this technology to the next level? \u201cBespoke facial animation for every single shot in the film,\u201d McLean says.<\/p>\n

All About the Faces<\/p>\n

I take another look at the faces. Looking a little closer, they do look slightly different \u2014 it\u2019s like someone broke down every single muscle movement in Prue\u2019s face and laid them out neatly in a row. That\u2019s intentional, McLean tells us, as he takes one of the masks and pops it on the puppet of Prue, who, briefly \u2014 without a face \u2014 looks a little like a terrifying Terminator with the bulging eyeballs and metal skeleton. But as soon as the mask pops into place, so does everything else.<\/p>\n

McLean explains that on Wildwood, LAIKA is no longer reusing faces. What does that mean? In the \u201cearly days\u201d of Coraline, ParaNorman, or The Boxtrolls, LAIKA\u2019s animators would create \u201ckits of expressions.\u201d Think shapes that your mouth makes to say words or sounds. \u201cIf you create those expressions and you photograph them in different orders, you can build dialogue, you can build the character saying words,\u201d McLean explains.<\/p>\n

But that is no longer the case with Wildwood. Each expression has a bespoke mask, or sculpt, dedicated to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth of the matter is no director wants to be told that they’re having to use the same smile at the end of the movie as they use in the beginning of the movie,\u201d McLean says, \u201cbecause every character goes on an emotional journey, a character arc. We always felt like we were kind of limited and we weren’t able to deliver what the director really wanted, which was the ability to have the character always going through a new emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The box we\u2019re looking at has 24 faces. \u201cThis represents one second of footage,\u201d McLean says.<\/p>\n

Setting RecordsLAIKA<\/p>\n

I was on the set of<\/a> Missing Link<\/a>, LAIKA\u2019s last feature film, seven years ago. I remember the visual effects artists touting it as the biggest production the studio had ever done. They had even set a record \u2014 they made the Guinness World Record<\/a> for the largest number of 3D-printed faces in a stop-motion animated movie. The Missing Link had 106,000 faces. Wildwood has 140,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe beat that record, obviously, on this show,\u201d McLean says. \u201cAnd we don’t do this because it’s faster. We don’t do it because it’s cheaper. We don’t do it because it takes less people. I mean, when people ask, I’ve been doing this for a long time, they want to understand, why would you 3D print faces first? There must be some logical reason that is saving you money or time or people. And the answer to all those questions is no; everything is actually more expensive, more time-consuming. The only reason we do it is because of what it provides our facial animation and our character performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

The faces are just the tip of the iceberg for LAIKA\u2019s incredible commitment to handmade art. The Wildwood production features 136 sets and 231 practical puppets. The armatures, or the skeletons for the silicone puppets, are also 3D printed, as are the musculature. They even used 3D printing to simulate water.<\/p>\n

Ollie Jones, the Head of Character and Practical FX at LAIKA, is showing us the puppet of Prue. \u201cThis is made out of steel balls and sockets, hinges, screws,\u201d he says, \u201cand essentially hasn’t really changed since King Kong. But we’ve been able to really elevate the techniques and really make the best tool possible to get lifelike performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s this amazing sort of Santa’s workshop filled with tinkerers and inventors and craftspeople and amazing artists that have the tools, the experience and the pure grit to try to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are too many details to name \u2014 the rigs created for the scenes of Prue flying on a giant eagle, with specific robotic mechanics implanted in her clothing and in the feathers to simulate wind movement; the giant looming trees that have been created to look just like the ones in Portland\u2019s Forest Park; the mansion with working lights.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d McLean admits, \u201cbecause it requires invention. If you’re trying to make this thing look amazing and then perform at the standards we want, it’s inevitable that you have to sort of tear the thing apart and just come up with a whole new way of building something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that’s this amazing sort of Santa’s workshop filled with tinkerers and inventors and craftspeople and amazing artists that have the tools, the experience and the pure grit to try to figure it out,\u201d he continues. \u201cThat’s the most important thing is the support that the studio gives us because innovation doesn’t come easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wildwood opens in theaters October 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m looking at a box of faces. That sounds a little creepy, but it is a little creepy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7269,156,9903,2386,48279,170325,409,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-602778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-animation","tag-entertainment","tag-fantasy","tag-homepage","tag-hp-latest","tag-inverse-interview","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}