

Laika ended up partnering with a research company in Germany to provide the software, which they were able to immediately put to work with Missing Link. "We have made a name for ourselves in the 3D printing world and the stop-motion world, so we don't accept any product off the shelf," Mclean said. Laika worked closely with Stratasys to help develop a full-color resin printer, an evolution of the white resin printer used for Coraline and the color powder printer they used for ParaNorman, Box Trolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
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So while it takes several months to design and create something, "We start to build a library of formulas for that particular movie that we can draw on to populate different characters and different costumes," Cook said. Because Laika has become virtually a one-stop shop to manufacture and use its technology, from fabrics to rigs, the departments have gained even greater control. So we have to engineer every single move." In costuming, Cook achieves that by using weights and lining in each version of a character's costume to signify a different movement and "trick the camera" with color and shape. "Like in live-action where you have people walking around and if they move their arm, their sleeve moves with it. "With animation, we don't get any movement for free," Cook added. Research is a good discussion piece, it brings you, the director, the animation supervisor, the animator all to one point, where if you just make stuff up, it becomes so much more subjective." And I find that it helps more and clarifies. I think if you look back at Coraline, you would see that they are more signifiers of how things would work, they're more cartoon-y or they're more symbolic. To make that commitment requires tons of research, Jones said, which was not how Laika used to work when they first broke out onto the scene with Coraline: "We used to work so much more with intuition. It's a sort of clean color throughout and it's different than most films that I've done." I love that, I think it gives the film a freshness. Even the jungle in India and the Pacific Northwest woods, we made one very blew and one very green just so they would be different. And I make sure the color script follows the action so you don't go from environments that share the same color palette. It may not look like it now, but I keep the colors to a very limited color palette per location. It's just color everywhere! So what I try to do is break out the locations and make them have their own signature overall feel. So I was excited to work on something a little more commercial, bright, poppy, just happier," Lowry said, adding: "It's a little bit daunting when you want to have a big colorful film that goes all over the world, because it can get into a zone I call the clown pants, which I don't like. "The color was very special and important to me because I've worked on a bunch of films that were not super colorful.
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For Lowry, that gave him license to go as wild on the color in his concept art and production pieces as he could - befitting the film's fantastical bent. It's an "illustrative, sumptuous style" that Butler wanted all of the departments to adhere to, puppets lead John Craney said.

It's in fact one of the most vibrant, colorful eras, which leant to Missing Link's signature saturated color scheme.įrom the clothes, to the sets, to the character designs themselves, nothing in Missing Link is monochromatic - even a black-and-white checkered cigar club has an undercurrent of magenta to it. We try not to get too fantasy with it though, especially in reality-based locations." Those locations were inspired by the Victorian era, which is usually thought of as a muted, subdued era of fashion and culture. We always try to keep everything based in historical, certainly culturally we do, but there's details for instance in the Pacific Northwest woods, the ivy is English ivy. "You take all the best parts and put them together even if they don't necessarily fit. "It's what I call Frankenstein-ing," Lowry added. Then I could sort of interpolate and spread that line out and start filling in common designs." "Using a lot of reference and picking four or five locations that were as different as possible and using them as templates, so making sure they were really unified visually - an exterior in a forest, a small cabin in a ship, a study in the Casa de Fortnight - making sure they had a commonality.
