BAF: The Boxtrolls- Behind the Scenes.

Mark Shapiro- Laika Studios.

Boxtrolls is the 3rd feature film by American animation studio Laika; after Coraline in 2009 and Paranorman in 2012.

Boxtrolls is filmed at 24 fps and is all filmed on 1s to give a more realistic look for the stop motion animation.

CGI and VFX are also used, but mostly just to remove green rods and rigs and add in backgrounds like the sky which is hand painted but added in in post production. 
Each character has around 30 puppets for multiple filming, costume changes or in case the puppet breaks during filming. Each puppet has to be identical so that the movie is consistent.
Eggs had 15 puppets of baby/ child Eggs and 15 of his older child character.

Laika studios has about 2 acres of studio space in a huge warehouse made up of about 50 units, each with different sets in them. Most days would see 10 or 11 units going at once, filming different scenes of the movie.

The trolls all have lights in their eyes to make them glow and electricians are on set working the eyes.
Some of the background people and trolls in large crowd scenes are composited after filming. 

Everything in Cheesebridge is assymetrical, there are no straight lines and even the town of Cheesebridge curves to the side.

Boxtrolls was 10 years in the making, based on the book 'Here Be Monsters' by Alan Snow. The planning and initial ideas and designs were started when Laika recieved the book in 2004. 
The film uses real lighting and everything you see in the film is made by hand, including every prop, even the smallest detail. 

Laika uses 3D printers to print each individual facial expression for each character. There are over 55,000 faces printed and each face takes around an hour to print. Some characters have mechanical faces if they don't have many facial expressions or don't talk very much or at all. 
There are three types of facial animation in stop motion: Replacement (as used for most characters that talk or have extreme facial expressions, and involves taking off the face of the character each frame that it needs to move and replacing it with the next face. Each face is magnetised for ease of changing), Mechanical (as used for characters with limited facial expresion, and moved by small screws and cogs inside the face) and claymation, which is not used by Laika.
Some of the hair of the characters is printed on, but others, like Winnie and Eggs, have hair that can be animated and are held in place by wire. Norman from Paranorman's hair is goat hair.

The lines on the faces from the changing faces, and the rigging that helps the characters stay balanced or jump, are removed in after effects. Dragonframe is the software actually used for the stop motion. It makes the animation process a lot easier as it can be controlled with just a click of a button. 300, 000 photos were taken for the movie at 24 fps.







The Mechadrill is 5ft tall and is worked by electricians. To create the fire inside the mechadrill, the team at Laika created an app that created fire that could be filmed frame by frame. This was then placed on an iPad mini that fit perfectly into the grate on the mechadrill.

The temperatures in the studios must be kept at a steady temperature so that the sets do not expand or contract in different temperatures, as this would have a huge effect on the filming.

The voices are recorded first and then the characters are animated to fit.

Previously, Laika puppets were made by McKinnon and Saunders, but for Boxtrolls, Laika started to make their own puppets, although they took a lot of knowledge from McKinnon and Saunders and even have some McKinnon and Saunders alums working for Laika now. 

Everyone at Laika studios is an artist of some form, even the runners who are there hoping to move up the ranks into a more permanent role. 


Q and A
How do they make the animators animate in a consistent style?
They work together a lot but they have different animators for each character so that characters move consistently.

How much did it cost to make Boxtrolls?
$8.5 million budget.

How are the puppets made? 
Breakdown of puppet building:
Armature.
Draw Character based on armature size.
Silicon/ Rubber mould casting.
Magnets.
Painting.
Hair.
Clothing.

Steel armatures- made with ball and socket joints.



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