Gallery: Go Behind the (Crazy-Complex) Scenes of The Boxtrolls
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Brian McLean, creative supervisor of replacement animation and engineering, in the Face Library at Laika, which houses tens of thousands of 3D-printed face parts. Though many of the face combinations are used in multiple scenes, on The Boxtrolls, for the first time in Laika’s history, the team created hundreds of unique faces that are used in a single scene and then never again. (Expand the gallery for more details.)
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Eggs, the central character in *The Boxtrolls*, has 1,400,000 possible facial expressions in the film. Each face was 3D-printed in color, then coated in superglue and sanded to perfection. Laika's color printing process has improved greatly since Laika’s *Coraline*; back then, artists had to hand-paint each of the heroine’s freckles on each of her faces.
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Boxtroll Fish in the hands of an animator armed with an Exacto knife. All of the puppet’s movements are manipulated by hand, even their tiny eyeballs. Each Boxtroll is named for the label on his box, and Fish’s sardine can gives him a nice bit of sartorial flair.
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Brad Schiff, animation supervisor, with Boxtrolls Fish and Shoe. According to directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, Schiff is known at Laika for pushing puppets to their limits—he broke an arm off the Mecha Drill during one tricky shot.
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Fish and Shoe on the elaborate underground cavern set where the Boxtrolls live and work.
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Steve Emerson, Annie Pomeranz, and Brian Van’t Hul all work in Laika's special effects department; Emerson and Van’t Hul are VFX supervisors and Pomeranz is a VFX producer. Each and every Laika film is a combination of stop-motion and CG.
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Mr. Trout (voiced by Nick Frost) and Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade) on set. The two act as the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the movie, contemplating the very nature of good and evil while in the midst of the action. (Make sure to stay through the end of the credit sequence for a bonus scene involving them.)
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Tory Bryant, the 3D color development texture lead, shading Snatcher’s face. The careful color shading of each face starts in 2D before it’s modeled in 3D and then printed.
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Lord Portley-Rind in his ballroom, which is the setting for the most complicated scene in *The Boxtrolls*: Between puppets and CG characters, the setpiece includes 150 characters, elaborate waltzing, and Snatcher’s heated pursuit of Eggs.
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Laika CEO and animator Travis Knight on the set with characters Snatcher and Winnie. In one week of work, the average animator at Laika completed about 90 individual frames, which works out to about 3.7 seconds’ worth of footage.
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Animation rigging supervisor Oliver Jones with the Mecha Drill—the largest puppet Laika has ever created, and the biggest stop-motion puppet rigs ever made.
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Costume designer Deborah Cook holding Winnie in the ballroom as Lord Portley-Rind and Eggs look on. Cook was able to imdulge her fancy on *The Boxtrolls*, as the Edwardian-Victorian era vibe with a twist meant she could put her own spin on classic elements.
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Art director Curt Enderle and some of the buildings of Cheesebridge. (Note the many cheese puns in the film—like the stores Fun & Fancy Brie, and The Cultured Curd.)
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As the creative supervisor for puppet fabrication, Georgina Hayns, shown here with many of *The Boxtrolls*' puppets, has to make sure that Laika’s characters look beautiful, that they fit into the world of the film, but also that they function the way the animators need them to.
