ParaNorman

I recently went and saw ParaNorman after hearing many good things about it from a friend in America and I was not disappointed. For a stop motion it was quite ambitious with the high-speed chases, huge sets and a fair bit of vfx, however LAIKA pulled it off to a great standard. What really impressed me was how the animation for the faces was done. They used what was called replacement animation as the material in which they used to create the models couldn't be morphed in the way they wanted. In order to do the animation in this way they had to create thousands of different facial expressions, to put it into perspective you would need around 24 different faces for one second of voicing. 300 puppets was the total amount in the film which meant that there was around 40,000 faces created.

The amount of effort LAIKA did to create the sets is pretty impressive in itself. Whether someone realises it or not, every minute detail within a film makes it what it is and when you find out how much work went in to something it really makes you appreciate the process and dedication of the people who made it. Even though it is stop motion and the process for this animation differs from the way you would create CGI, it still involves a lot of time and effort and the final product is quite an inspiration.


Mark Shapiro, who works as Marketing and Brand Manager at LAIKA will be attending BAF explaining how ParaNorman was made so I am really looking forward to seeing the behind the scenes of the film and what it was like to work on it.