Boxtrolls

Boxtrolls behind the scenes!

Here is one talk that I really couldn't wait for, my love for all the animations created by Laika, it is the most relevant to my tone of voice and ultimately where I would like to end up in the future. either using 3D software or modelling the sets, which are very much the style that I like to work in!

The presentation was held by Mark Shapiro, the marketing manager of Laika

Laika has been around for 30 Years, based in Portland america. over this time they have created 3 feature length films:

Coraline 2009

Paranorman 2012

Boxtrolls 2013

Here is Marks explanation of what its like to market a feature film:

The advertisement posters are different between the US and the UK, and it is marks job to curate what is appropriate for different countries.

The process of creating these feature length films is astonishing. the studio is comprised of space equal to 2 empty football pitches, which everything is built from scratch to fit the space.

The actual percentage of animators in the crew equals 10 percent! which is an extraordinary number when you think about it.

They employ Mackinnon and Saunders to create the puppets used in these animations

electricians are on the set 24/7 as the lighting and leads involved in the creations of these animations are crucial.

The backdrops are painted as well as green screen and occasionally blue screen

Here are some of the things that were told to us that are involved to create these fascinating animations:

The company employs 6 complete colour 3D printers, these used to not be able to print in colour which made the company need to paint each individual face that they print. and as we all know these films required tens of thousands of printed faces. but with the ability of the colour printer they are able to boycott this process completely to save money and time.

The faces were created in Maya, animated to get the key frames and then printed/

although these faces were printed, to make things quicker and more efficient, the characters that didn't have many lines would have mechanics in their face to make animating a little more efficient as they can utilize frame by frame techniques. this is the kind of thinking that I need to employ, which techniques should I execute and where? 

The animators on a good week would produce 2 and a half seconds of animation ... this is what stop motion animation is. very time consuming and labour intensive. which I need to take into account when creating mine, as it will take a lot longer to create them.

But then the faces would present these horrific seems that need to be removed by post effects and the crew responsible for cleaning up the visuals.

Here are a list of programmes that are used in the making of these films

After Effects

Photoshop

Dragon Frame

Nuke

Shotgun

Maya

"The animator is so important!"

"Pre Vis is essential!"

As I discovered in my previous module which was just backed up by what mark was saying, that references and pre visualisation is so important due to the direction of the animation needing a guide.

The whole process took 4 years: from character design + storyboarding to completion.