5/11/23
LAIKA STUDIO: Kubo and the two strings
Laika Studio is a place where their films are rich with imagination and stories and crafted by passionate artists who give life to the characters. Stop-motion animation has all the things that art has: illustrations, paintings, music, cinematography, and sculpture. They are all packed into one in stop-motion animation. Kuko and the Two Strings is one of my favorite animations and my top stop-motion animation as well. It tells a story about magic, music, family, and finding yourself.
“When we started Laika 10 years ago, we could see the writing on the wall. Stop-motion animation was basically taking its last, dying breath. We had to come up with a way, if we wanted to continue to make a living in this medium that we loved, to bring it into a new era and invigorate it.”
-Travis Knight, director of Kubo and the Two Strings
Interview with Travis Knight:
- Music plays an important part because music is part of our lives; it is a way to express emotions. Giving this to the character Kubo is a metaphor that music gives us life, which is like a reflection of life. Emotions we experience are everywhere, and music is one of the things that connects people together and makes them feel their emotions.
- Stop-motion animation requires tremendous discipline. It is a really hard and time-consuming industry. According to the interview, focusing on the script in the first stage about the story and the character is the most important thing before doing the visuals. Thematic ideas are explored during the film. In the film, the narration is a narrative element that is frequently scorned. Many people dismiss the use of a narrator voiceover as lazy writing, a way of slapping on some background or context without having to write it into the screenplay. But the initial planning script and research directly affect what aspects of life you can put in the film to resonate with the audience.
- Stop motion can be regarded as one of the most traditional handcrafted mediums. However, what Laike did with it was not only to express the reality of human-made but also the innovation of the combination of high technology stuff and low-fi stuff merged together. In the film, one of the impressive parts is how they create the waves in the ocean by using different materials for installation and then using CG techniques to enhance the effect. Scratching the surface is what you can do with this medium. They have always tried to use every kind of film-making technique to put art, craft, and science together.
- Stop-motion Animation is not something mathematically made; the beauty is in the inherent humanity of how the animator animates their films. And what the animator does is bring something imperfect that is being brought to life.
Desired job role: Art director
The required skills for an art director are:
- Provides research and inspiration to support the work of the design and fabrication teams.
- Creates comprehensive packets containing all relevant information needed to launch fabrication on practical set builds and digital asset builds.
- Maintains up-to-date information on all assigned sets, using the production database and supplementary documents, for use across the production.
- Remains current on scheduling priorities and provides timely problem-solving for any issues that arise in the production process through the Art Department and interdepartmental communication.
- Provides feedback on work produced by design and fabrication teams to ensure style and quality standards are maintained in accordance with the look of the show.
- Provide supplemental layouts, references, and artwork to clarify the artistic intent for environments, props, graphics, paint, and textures.
- Liaises with production, rigging, animation, story, and camera to determine performance needs for props and sets.
From what I have learned from the online interviews and job listings, I personally think being an art director is something I am looking for. The art director is the core of the whole project and needs to obtain multiple skills and layers of knowledge in order to hold the team together. And most importantly, it did not lose the part about participating in the art and design of the project. I don’t think I would consider being a producer as a career goal because it kind of loses the sense of making art but is full of scheduling and being in charge. However, an art director would combine both sides of it. It will be hard to start my career as an art director at first, but I would like it to be a goal in the future, as being a director carries a lot of weight and responsibility. But as an assistant art director, it might be a better choice to start.