The Boxtrolls’ stop-motion magic

SINGAPORE — This week, the weird and wonderful characters of The Boxtrolls emerge from hiding. Based on the Alan Snow fantasy adventure novel Here Be Monsters!, it’s the latest 3D stop-motion animated feature from the makers of Coraline and ParaNorman.

You’ll be hearing the voices of Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning, Toni Collette, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Tracy Morgan, but it’s also hard work for those behind the scenes — the 65 artists and craftspeople of the puppets department at American animation studio Laika. So what goes into bringing these cave-dwelling, rubbish-collecting critters to life on the big screen? We quiz Georgina Hayns, head of the puppets department.

Q: What was the inspiration for the visual world of The Boxtrolls?

A: We drew a lot of inspiration from artists through the years and referenced a lot of German Expressionist paintings, especially for the face colours. That comes from the drawings of original conceptual designer Michel Breton, who drew everything with a pen and ink. What we do is look at the history of art and see what will link up with our original concept artwork. In this case, we were looking at how artists painted flesh throughout the eras. We were drawn to certain images from German Expressionist painters who used lines, or a kind of edging in a different colour to highlight a cheekbone or nose. This kind of method really linked in with Breton’s drawings. The lines in the drawings looked a little shaky. We really enjoyed that look and thought it was perfect to convey the feel of the story, so we wanted to bring this concept into the characters’ faces. We devised several techniques to reproduce that shaky line in the puppets.

Q: So how does this actually work?

A: The process starts with sculptors, who sculpt maquettes, which are hard, clay versions of the drawn image of characters. From the sculpted samples, we work out how we’re going to make our puppets. All of our puppets have internal skeletons, so they can move. In stop-motion, they have to be moved frame by frame because 24 movements make one second of film. Since Coraline, we have actually used our own machine (to do this).

Q: Did you have to make a lot of puppets for each character? Which one had the most?

A: We had to make 20 puppets of Eggs (the human lead character) because he’s the hero. He is in a lot of scenes and we had to really take special care that everything was consistent and exactly the same and repeatable. Madame Frou Frou is an elaborate puppet, which had almost every technique incorporated into making it. We made at least five (puppets) for that character.

Q: There seems to be thousands of puppet heads made for this film.

A: One big difference with The Boxtrolls is how we designed and made the faces. Faces are very delicate and they tend to break, so we had to devise ways to manufacture as many as we needed and be consistent in the shapes and colouring.

Q: It visually looks old school, but we heard you’ve been using modern technology such as laser cutting for the film.

A: We brought in a laser cutter to cut wooden parts for the art department, including the models and props. We then very quickly found out it could cut fabric as well. The Boxtrolls is set in an amazing fantasy Victorian, Dickensian setting so, for the elaborate costumes, we were able to create entire patterns and all of the fine details for the cut-outs in velvet just by etching into it with the laser cutter. It is amazing to take huge industrial machines and use them on a very tiny scale to create incredibly detailed puppet parts. Flowing fabric and flowing hair are some of the biggest fears in animation and puppet-making. For The Boxtrolls, I think we really obtained flowing fabric in the very challenging ballroom dance sequence, making all of these different ladies dance in dresses.

The Boxtrolls opens in cinemas tomorrow. Transcript courtesy of UIP.