Laika's 10th Anniversary: Celebrate With A Look Back At Stop-Motion Wonder

Stop-motion animation is perhaps the most difficult in the entire animation field. Animators have to move their characters and sets by a single frame at a time to film 24 frames in a second. And if you've seen movies from Laika such as Coraline and ParaNorman, then you know that they don't hold back when it comes to intricate and meticulously crafted production pieces.

Now a new video reel from Laika celebrates 10 years of stop-motion magnificence, running through clips and behind the scenes footage from their films Coraline, ParaNorman and most recently The Boxtrolls. Plus, there's some new footage from their forthcoming adventure Kubo and the Two Strings. Watch!

Here's the Laika 10th anniversary reel from the company's YouTube page:

As you can see in the above video, the sets for these stop-motion animated movies aren't small by any means. Sure they're miniatures, but they're quite large and detailed. For example, Coraline was staged in a 140,000 square-foot warehouse in Oregon (where Laika is based), which was divided into 150 lots, which were turned into 150 different sets for the movie, which included a 42-foot apple orchard, a model of Ashland, Oregon and much more.

At any give time, there are a few dozen animators working on rehearsing scenes (using themselves as stand-ins to plan the animation) or shooting scenes where only 90-100 seconds of animation are finished each week. It's quite the laborious process, but considering how the final products turn out, it's more than worth it for the animators and for the audiences.

If you need to see more of the kind of great stuff that Laika is doing, be sure to check out their impressive trailer for Kubo and the Two Strings, featuring the voices of Matthew McConaughey, Rooney Mara, Ralph Fiennes, Charlize Theron and more. The film arrives in theaters on August 19th, 2016.

LAIKA, the award-winning animation studio nestled in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, celebrates 10 years of bold and memorable filmmaking this month. For a company whose name means "little barker" in Russian, Portland, Oregon-based LAIKA has made quite a noise in the global film industry over a relatively short time. With its world-class filmmaking team, LAIKA pushes the boundaries of family entertainment and animated movies, redefining what stories can and should be told through the art form. Take a look at some of the artistry in this 10th Anniversary video.