![]() ![]() Perhaps the most important Autodesk tool for LAIKA, though, is Shotgun, their project management software. Inventor enables the designers to evaluate what’s needed for a given puppet, and whether modular components (balls, sockets, joints, and the like) from LAIKA’s standard catalog will suffice, or whether custom elements will need to be designed and fabricated. “You have to have super-tight tolerances, because any slop in the movement will show up onscreen,” said Fischler. The construction of the armatures is critical. We have Haas and a Mazak CNC machines, as well as a laser cutter and a water-jet cutter.” “All the armatures are made in-house in our machine shop. ![]() “LAIKA uses Inventor to design the armatures that allow the animators to pose the puppets,” Stringer explained. Moving the puppets relies on another Autodesk tool, Inventor, which is used for 3D mechanical design. “Maya has been around since 1998, so we can count on it, and there’s tons of talent out there who know how to use it.” “When you’re making an animated film, there are thousands of problems that will happen,” Emerson said. Maya is also used for digital visual effects, so it’s critical for all elements of production. In the end we printed 106,000 bespoke faces.” We had eight printers running 24 hours a day making 2,000 faces a week. “For Missing Link, we used Stratasys J750 color printers. Rapid technology advances have made a big difference since then. “For Coraline, with the Stratasys polyjet printers we had back then, we could only print in one color, so the faces were all painted by hand,” said Jeff Stringer, Head of Production Technology at LAIKA. Using Autodesk’s 3D computer animation, modeling, simulation and rendering software Maya, they design thousands of different facial expressions and print them. That takes creating empathy, and since the characters’ faces are their main focus, our use of 3D printing becomes so important.”īecause of that need to create “living” and likeable characters, they’ve used 3D printing for puppet faces in all their movies. “People want to go to the movies and be moved. “A lot of what we’re doing is realizing the full potential of stop-motion animation, and telling stories nobody else can,” said Steve Emerson, VFX Supervisor at LAIKA.
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