Coraline | Hidden Worlds: The Films of LAIKA

BUILDING A FOUNDATION

Technology and Technique

The techniques used to develop the Coraline puppet are the foundation of all of LAIKA’s future work.

Coraline is the first stop-motion film to integrate visual effects and 3D-printing rapid prototype technology into traditional stop-motion production.
Coraline is the first-ever stop-motion animated feature to be conceived and photographed in Stereoscopic 3D. The process included shooting two pictures for each frame – a left-eye frame and a right-eye frame – with the same camera.

Ones VS. Twos

With Coraline, LAIKA was one of the first studios to film a stop motion feature film on Ones instead of Twos. Ones are shot at 24 frames per second with movement in every frame, which registers naturally to the human eye. Twos means movement in every other frame, resulting in 12 fps and actions that are less smooth.
Ones = 24 frames/second Twos = 12 frames/second

Armature Test Video, Coraline, 2009.

Animation at 24 frames per second, Coraline, 2009.

Coraline face expressions, Coraline, 2009.

Jumping Mouse Circus, Coraline, 2009.

THE PUPPETS

A Precocious Girl

For the character of Coraline, there are 28 different puppets of varying sizes; the main Coraline puppet stands 9.5 inches high.
At one point in the movie, Coraline makes 16 different expressions in a span of 35 seconds.
There are a total of 207,336 possible face combinations for Coraline and a total of 17,633 possible face combinations for Mother.

Creature Features

Some of Coraline’s most spectacular scenes rely on a huge menagerie of puppet animals.

248 Scottie Dogs sit in the audience with Coraline and Wybie watching Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's stage performance.
At its height, the Jumping Mouse Circus sequence has 61 carefully choreographed mice on-screen at once.

Magic Garden, Coraline, 2009.

Magic Garden Behind the Scenes, Coraline, 2009.

THE SETS

A Magic Garden

Many common items were transformed into exotic plants and other items.

Set designers applied over 1,300 square feet (about half the area of a tennis court) of fake fur to stand in for grass.
The garden lilies were silicone thimbles turned inside out and then hand-painted.
The snow was made from superglue and baking soda.
At the center of the flowers in the fantastical garden are ping-pong balls.
40 trees were handmade for the orchard.
Popcorn kernels were popped, cooled, spray-painted and hand-painted to become the cherry blossoms on the trees in the orchard.

Mr.Bobinsky and Coraline, Coraline, 2009.

THE COSTUMES

Size Very, Very, Very Small

Tiny clothes for tiny costumes call for tiny tools and supplies.

The only leather thin enough to make the doll shoes and Mr. Bobinsky’s boots came from antique Victorian gloves.
One crew member was hired specifically to knit miniature sweaters and other clothing for the puppet characters, using knitting needles almost as thin as human hair.
To construct 1 puppet for Coraline, 10 craftspeople worked for 3-4 months.

THE SHOOT

Multiple copies of the character puppets can be shot simultaneously on different sets, but even so, shooting a stop-motion feature film is quite time consuming.

The Coraline shoot lasted over 18 months, following 2 years of pre-production.
Over 130 sets were built across 52 different stages at the studios.
Spanning 183,000 square feet (about twice the area of a Manhattan city block), the 52 stages were the most ever deployed for a stop-motion animated feature.
Coraline marks the first time that a stop motion animation morphing sequence has ever been accomplished; the sequence runs for 130 frames, or nearly 6 seconds

The shoot, Coraline, 2009.

THE TECHNOLOGY

Replacing Faces

For the many faces of Coraline, LAIKA pioneered the use of emerging 3D-printing technology in replacement animation. Previously sculpted facial expressions used a few hundred hand-sculpted faces.

There were 207,336 possible face combinations for Coraline.
17,633 possible face combinations for Mother. This offered more facial options and allowed animators to elicit groundbreaking performances that had never been seen in stop-motion animation.

Replacing Faces, Coraline, 2009.