· Must Watch: First Teaser for Rian Johnson's 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' by Alex Billington April 14, 2017 Source: YouTube.

How 'Kubo and the Two Strings' Merged Stop- Motion Animation and 3. D Printing (Plus a 4.

Pound Puppet)Stop- motion animation is a time- honored art: Humans have been molding figures out of clay and filming them one frame at a time since the dawn of cinema. But last summer, while visiting Laika studios outside Portland, Ore., I encountered a stop- motion puppet so advanced — not to mention so huge — that simply lifting one of its boney fingers was nearly as complex as a lunar launch.

LAIKA has produced some of the most fantastic feature films in history. Now it falls to me to rank these stop-motion classics in the making. Creators of the Oscar-nominated features Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings.

At 4. 00 pounds, standing 1. Kubo and the Two Strings is believed to be the largest, most complicated stop- motion puppet ever built. As I wandered through Laika's soundstages, where Kubo painstakingly was shot over a period of two years before its release in August, I kept running into all sorts of scary monsters — like that 1. Most stop- motion sets are universes in miniature, with tiny towns built on workshop tabletops — and that's also taking place on these stages. But mostly I felt like a mouse in a world of giants."There were all kinds of red flags to making this movie," says 4. Travis Knight — son of Nike founder Phil Knight — who took time off from his day job as president and CEO of Laika to shoot Kubo, which has been nominated for a Golden Globe award, as his directorial debut. Watch Tempted HD 1080P on this page. It was the most demanding experience of my life.

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• · How 'Kubo and the Two Strings' Merged Stop-Motion Animation and 3D Printing (Plus a 400-Pound Puppet) by Carolyn.

· This is as real as it gets kids, you learn from living! Lionsgate has unveiled the first trailer for the film The Glass Castle, the latest feature from. A new trailer for LAIKA Entertainment and Focus Features stop-motion animated film 'Kubo and the Two Strings' reveals the magic behind the models.

It was like shooting a stop- motion David Lean movie."The film tells the story of a young boy, Kubo (voiced by Game of Thrones' Art Parkinson), who wanders through a magical ancient Japanese kingdom searching for clues about his dead father's life as a famous samurai warrior. Along the way, he picks up a couple of sidekicks, a talking monkey (Charlize Theron) and an equally verbose beetle (Matthew Mc. Conaughey), and gets into scraps with the evil twin Sisters (Rooney Mara doing both siblings' voices) and their terrifying father, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes). It's a story about loss and healing and forgiveness," is how Knight sees it. It's about how loving someone or something can make you vulnerable, but also give you strength."Knight began his career toiling as an animator at Will Vinton Studios, the stop- motion company that, in the 1. California Raisins ad campaign and invented the word "Claymation" (or at least trademarked it). But by the early 2.

Will Vinton, ravaged by the recession and the flattening of the stop- motion industry by CGI, was teetering on collapse. Out of nowhere, a white Knight appeared — this one named Phil — who invested huge sums of money in the company and changed its name to Laika (after a Russian word for "dog") in 2. His son later got a big promotion; he became president and CEO. What might have appeared at first as blatant nepotism turned out to be a sound business plan.

Travis had a knack for running the place and right away turned things around with a series of features that pleased both animation elites and general audiences. Laika's first film release was 2. Coraline, which was nominated for an Oscar and grossed $1. Its second movie, 2. Para. Norman, also was Oscar nominated and grossed more than $1. Ditto its third, 2. The Boxtrolls. But Kubo and the Two Strings is the first film Knight has taken upon himself to direct.

And it's by far the most ambitious project his company has attempted, pushing the envelope of 3. D printing in animation to new levels (the gadget played a big role in the shooting of almost all of the figures in this film). It also may be the most expensive, with a budget reportedly nearing $6. Knight insists it's less, but declines to give a number).

Even thematically, its material is more daring, dealing with such difficult subjects as loss and death. I wanted to approach [the subject of death] with sincerity and honesty," says Knight, who suffered his own loss in 2. The understanding that while [the dead] are not physically with us, we can carry them with us in our lives — that's the understanding and resolution Kubo comes to in the movie. It took me years to come to that resolution myself."The idea for the film came from a former character designer on Coraline, Shannon Tindle, who pitched it to Knight in 2. Para. Norman. A sucker for fantasy and a fan of Japanese culture (he first traveled to Japan at age 8 with his dad), Knight kicked the concept to a couple of writers, Marc Haimes and Chris Butler (who wrote and directed Para. Norman). Somewhere along the way, Knight decided not only to greenlight the project, but also to lens it himself.

And not just lens it, but do some of the actual animation."I bit off more than I could chew," he admits. I figured I could direct, animate and run the company, no problem. But it was more than I could handle. I would come in the early morning and crank out a few frames before the day would begin, and then at the end of the day, I'd go back and crank out a few more. As an animator, it was really frustrating to work that way. But I love it. I can't not do it."To "crank out" even a few frames of Kubo required a staggering amount of effort. Unlike, say, a Wallace and Gromit film, where animators use their hands to move clay models who have a limited (albeit adorable) repertoire of expressions, the creatures in Kubo virtually have unlimited expressive potential.

This is where the 3. D printer comes in: Laika's designers whip up thousands of versions of each character's eyes or mouth, render them on the 3. D printer, then swap them onto the puppet's face, frame by frame, to create different expressions, all of which get smoothed over with a final layer of CG effects. It's a technique Laika has been pioneering for years — its developers won a scientific Academy Award for it earlier this year — and with Kubo it has advanced to next- generation levels.

Kubo himself, a mere 9- inch puppet, has 1. This attention to detail didn't end with the characters' faces. Even the clothing the puppets wore required a deep dive into authenticity (see sidebar) while the overall feel of the film was heavily influenced by ancient Japanese aesthetics.

The look was very much based in Japanese wood- block art," says VFX supervisor Steve Emerson. It's present in all of the effects, from the environments to the water surfaces to every raindrop in the storm."That storm, incidentally, begins a prologue in which baby Kubo washes up on a shore after a shipwreck — one of the scenes that Knight animated himself. It was all these tiny little grains of sand and mud — a nightmare to keep track of it all," he recalls of the scene. Making this movie wore me out. I can't wait to do another."In her own way, Deborah Cook is the most famous stylist in Portland, Ore. As the costume designer for animation studio Laika, she's the artist who designs clothes for the stop- motion puppets in all of the studio's films, from Coraline's shoes to the Boxtrolls' cardboard suits to Kubo's kimono. His robe has been handed down from his father, one of the greatest samurai," she explains of the outfit of her latest creation.

To design it, Cook traveled all the way to Japan, where she collected fabric samples and steeped herself in the culture. I did an in- depth study not only of the culture and costumes of ancient Japan in the Jamon era — about 3. B. C. — but also present- day high fashion and vintage Japanese clothing." The biggest fashion challenge of the film? The evil twin Sisters (left), who wear feathered cloaks that would make a peacock envious. Says Cook, "They had about 4.

DOES IT COME IN EXTRA, EXTRA, EXTRA SMALL? How do you dress a 9- inch- tall Japanese boy from 3.

Must Watch: First Trailer for 'The Glass Castle' Featuring Brie Larsonby Alex Billington. May 1. 8, 2. 01. 7Source: You. Tube"This is as real as it gets kids, you learn from living!" Lionsgate has unveiled the first trailer for the film The Glass Castle, the latest feature from writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton, who is one of the most underrated filmmakers working today. Cretton has made two outstanding films so far: I Am Not a Hipster (in 2. Short Term 1. 2 (in 2.

This time he adapts the memoirs of Jeannette Walls, as played by Brie Larson, a woman growing up in a dysfunctional family of nonconformist nomads with a mother who's an eccentric artist and an alcoholic father. The cast features Naomi Watts & Woody Harrelson (as her odd mother & father, respectively), Sarah Snook, Max Greenfield, Brigette Lundy- Paine, and others. As expected, this looks fantastic and it's easily one of my most anticipated films to see this year. Take a look. Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Destin Cretton's The Glass Castle, direct from You. Tube: For more updates follow the film on Twitter @Glass. Castle. Film or follow Destin on Twitter @destindaniel.

A girl named Jeannette (Brie Larson) comes of age in a dysfunctional family of nonconformist nomads with a mother who's an eccentric artist and an alcoholic father who would stir the children's imagination with hope as a distraction to their poverty. The Glass Castle is written and directed by talented American filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, of the films I Am Not a Hipster and Short Term 1. This is based on the memoir by Jeannette Walls, adapted by Cretton and Andrew Lanham. Lionsgate will release The Glass Castle in theaters starting on August 1. Stay tuned for more. First impression?

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