welcome back

wow. look at that. its been a year since my last post. i don't feel the need to justify myself, but maybe i owe you an explanation anyway. i just got super busy... one of my last posts ends with "things are about to get different", and things got different. -i went back to work full time! needless to say, the time i had to spend sitting in front of my computer trying to impress 15 followers just really dwindled. BUT i didn't just get busy, i got lazy as well. at some point i gave myself an ultimatum that i wouldn't make any new posts until i updated my template. since i had built this blog way back in the pre-google owned blogger era, a bunch of boring stuff that i don't understand had become outdated. this was SUPPOSED to be an incentive for me to get it done, because i had all this stuff i wanted to post on the blog. it only took me a year, but i finally updated my template, so i can start posting again. i probably still have some kinks to work out, but this seems to be looking pretty similar to the old one. good enough for me for now.

now on to more interesting things...



since it is now early may, i guess that means i've been back at LAIKA for just over a year, designing and building armatures for the next feature. "the next feature" ...that's really all i have been able to say up until this week, when the studio finally announced that ParaNorman would be its next film. i have to admit that it has been really hard to not talk about it, partly because people were always asking me what i was working on lately, but mostly because i'm SO EXCITED about the film. its really going to be awesome.

so that's the big news for today. i will be back soon with some more interesting stuff to talk about. hopefully some images from the freelance days, and also some things that may surprise you.

pandering

well, i feel a little awkward mentioning this here, as it feels a little too much like tooting my own horn... but some of you may be interested. marc spess of animateclay.com recently included an interview with me in the 3rd edition of his "secrets revealed" e-book on stop motion. hopefully i don't come across like TOO much of a jackass. the publication is a great overall resource. marc covers pretty much every aspect of making a stop motion film and includes insight you can use both in your garage and on a big budget feature. the new edition also includes interviews with anthony scott, kathi zung, justin rasch, and brad schiff.

you can buy it here

while on the topic of telling you how you should spend your money, i highly recommend you go see the new film moon.

more developments at LAIKA

LAIKA made some big announcements earlier today. travis knight is stepping up to the position of CEO of the company, and claire jennings is taking a position as "president of entertainment". you can read the press release for all the gory details.

i think this is great news. i have a lot of confidence in both of these individuals. claire jennings is very well-respected throughout the animation industry, and she's already made a positive impact at LAIKA since she came aboard midway through coraline. i consider myself fortunate to have been able to work closely with travis knight over the past couple of years on coraline. he's an amazing animator, and was one of the most hardworking individuals on the project. i'm sure he'll be even more devoted to his new position as CEO.

who knows if any of this will speed up the timeline for another stop motion feature at LAIKA, but i have to assume so. good people are at the reigns, so i have hope.

ghost town

dang.

i'm tired.

out of the blue i got called back to work for a few weeks to get puppets ready for some publicity appearances. there is an exhibit at the cartoon art museum in san francisco that we are preparing stuff for, and there is a whole bunch of other crap that needs to be done for the premiere. its a madhouse. i hadn't really expected to be back at work any time soon, so i guess i'm going to be a little light on free time at least up until around the time the movie comes out. it is nice, but kind of weird to be back in that giant building which is now a ghost town. i think we had somewhere up around 60 people working in character fabrication at the height of production, and now there are about 5 of us working. needless to say it feels a little different. its good to spend a little time with coraline though. i kinda missed her.

(i just realized this is going to be a pretty coraline-centric post... sorry about that. i DO have a life.)

in other related news, boxes 21, and 28 have surfaced. there have also been several button boxes showing up at different places. i can't really tell if all of these (admittedly cool) word of mouth marketing schemes are resulting in much mainstream awareness. i don't have TV so i don't really know how much presence there is on air right now, but i know they are cranking things up starting this week. i also don't live in a huge metropolitan market, so we don't have massive billboards or plastered storefronts. at least not yet. i've had a couple of relatives send me emails saying they've seen TV promos and stuff. pretty cool.

it seems like people who are into sneakers are liking these coraline dunks. i've actually seen these in person and they are pretty nice. the sole glows in the dark. (just let your soul glow!) you guys probably already know about the contest for winning these.

speaking of coraline swag, there are some strange goings on over at ebay lately. most notably, there have been a ton of black coraline keys popping up and selling for up to 70 bucks a pop. that's a lot! i think those keys are pretty badass, but i don't think they're worth 70 dollars, especially when you know they are just being picked up off the ground by the people who are selling them. whatever. one guy has a listing that states that the keys were given to VIPs and people on the crew. RIGHT. and what's this scavenger hunt business all of the auctions are claiming. i think it is obvious that the scavenger hunt is to find the frigging keys. anyway, i think they're cool, even if people are getting ripped off. if you have one of these keys and want to part ways with it, send it to me and i'll make it worth your while.

interesting times

i'm guessing that many of you have already read the news that laika has pulled the plug on their proposed CG film "jack and ben", leading to the layoffs of 65 employees. weird timing, right? obviously this totally sucks for those 65 people. i don't think i personally know any of those directly affected by the layoffs, but i can relate since i was recently "rolled off" from the company myself. there is a huge difference, though. we got to finish a movie, and they didn't even get theirs off the ground. i can't imagine how bad it must feel to invest yourself in a project only to see it come to a grinding halt and have nothing to show for it. i think this decision really surprised everyone, so there is an inevitable negative emotional component to the parting of ways. i sympathize.

HOWEVER,

i can only see this as a good thing for the future of laika. according to this article in animation magazine, "jack and ben's animated adventure" was announced in july of 2005. (that article is so old that coraline is then referred to as a hybrid CG/stop motion film.) when i started work on coraline in 2006 "jack and ben" was well into the development process. the 2005 article linked above states that:

"jack and ben will reportedly tackle the ever-popular talking animal formula as it follows the adventures of two brothers from a yet-undisclosed sector of the animal kingdom."

a more recent synopsis was a little more specific:

"A young bird, desperate to fly solo, and his little brother, determined to tag along, risk their tail-feathers when they skip migration to compete in a cross-continental race."

maybe they didn't feel like it had the right tone for a follow up to comparatively edgy film like coraline. another article published in the oregonian a couple of months ago left me with some questions along those lines. in brief, the piece is about how laika is going against the grain on coraline by using an unconventional animation technique (stop motion), telling an unconventional type of contemporary children's story (scary), and doing it in an unconventional town (portland). (its still too early to use the word maverick isn't it?) i remember trying to reconcile that philosophy with the rather typical sounding "talking animal movie" and it just never made much sense to me. in some ways i'm relieved that they pulled the plug on it, because it is an indication that they are trying to refine the direction they want to take things in the future. hopefully the NEAR future. if coraline does well, i think laika is going to be in a good position to make good on those claims of creating a niche for itself with films that are a bit more distinctive than all that other CG mung out there, and that can only be good, right?

ultimately, we all know it just comes down to 3 things. yeah, STORY, STORY, STORY! if you start with an interesting, solid, tight story and then manage to tell that story in a compelling way by using the technique that best suits it, then you are really doing all you can. if you can tell great stories and still manage to stylistically stand apart from the crowd, then you've really accomplished something rare. if laika wants to tell some of these stories with CG, that's great. i hope they're awesome. if laika wants to tell some of these stories with stop motion, that's even better. i hope they kick ass too, and i hope i get to work on some of them. according to the article reporting the layoffs laika will have more announcements after the first of the year. let's hope those announcements lead to more work for all of us.

............................................................................................
reading back over this... jeez, what a boring post... i'm really trying to come across as some kind of a know-it-all, huh? blah blah blah. at least we still have this "jack and ben" to look forward to next year, even though i really never look forward to jack...



EXTRA!
i don't really know what the heck this is, but it looks crazy. if you live in NYC go down to 57th and 3rd and tell me what the heck is going on.

GO TIME!

it looks like the big push for coraline has officially begun. most notably, the coraline movie website is finally completely open. no more passwords. for now. first and foremost, it looks great. it can be kind of a pain to explore, but that's all part of the fun, i guess. i think kids will dig that aspect more than most of us old farts. poking around coraline's house pays off though. there is a lot of hidden content in the different rooms. i don't want to give too much away. i will say that the design work these guys are doing is pretty amazing. you don't often see film promotion that, you know... looks good. if you can find the desktop wallpapers on the site (look in the foyer) you'll see what i mean. very tasteful, and just NICE. they're not beating you over the head with logos or huge characters' faces and all that ugly stuff you normally see. speaking of exploration, make sure you find "the well" on the site. there are a bunch of cool production stills that show various crew members at work. sadly, i'm not is any of these, but it is just as rewarding to see so many of my pals getting some coverage. if you are especially attentive, you can see some pretty cool things in these shots that probably won't make into trailers, at least until after the film is released. i'll also mention that the music on the site is pretty cool. i'll admit that i was never a huge fan of the temp score that was being used during production (sorry, dudes!) but the final mixes, which i'll assume are what we are hearing, are well above and beyond my expectations. so a round of applause for composer bruno coulais for some amazing music. hopefully it will work even better in the film. another fun thing you can do on the site is visit the other mother's workshop, where you can upload your picture and sew buttons into your eyes. yeah, sounds kinda goofy but it is strangely satisfying.



i also found what may be the very first full review of coraline. i'm not sure where it would have been screened, but it certainly seems like this guy saw it. he liked it, and that's what matters.

finally, in conjunction with the full launch of the website, a bunch of exclusive alphabet "cards" were sent to different online media recourses. yeah 26 in all, good guess. cool idea, (maybe?) but the images are pretty underwhelming in contrast to the beautiful boxes that have been going out, and nice look we've now seen on the website. hmmmm. these alphabet cards look more along the lines of that international poster i posted a while back. whatever, it is what it is. the alphabet stuff is linked below.

if you follow one of the links and it doesn't work, copy and paste the address. i was able to view all of the images that way. i found this list over at x-realms. thanks to admin "sith happens" for doing the hard part!

A: AICN (720x1067)
B: Bullz Eye (400x550)
C: Collider (719x1067)
D: Dread Central (525x779)
E: Eclipse Magazine (690x1024)
F: Fearnet (469x694)
G: Geeks of Doom (721x1067)
H: Happy News (325x480)
I: IGN (486x720)
J: JoBlo (719x1067)
K: KOL (600x889)
L: Latino Review (540x801)
M: MTV (600x889)
N: Neil Gaiman (719x1967)
O: Obsessed with Film (337x500)
P: Premiere (300x445)
Q: Quick Stop Entertainment (720x1067)
R: Rotten Tomatoes (439x652)
S: Sci-fi (400x594)
T: Twitch Film (500x740)
U: UGO (520x770)
V: VFXWorld (337x500)
W: Worst Previews (719x1067)
X: X-Realms (720x1067)
Y: Yahoo! Movies (446x660)
Z: Zap2It (720x1067)

Mysteries!

sometime last week i started noticing some strange things popping up around on the net. if you are reading this blog i'm sure you have realized by now that i am watching the evolution of coraline's marketing campaign pretty closely. in one of my standard coraline searches i came up with this link. over the next couple of days more boxes were showing up elsewhere, and there seems to be a steady stream of them showing up every day or two now. it goes like this: random internet guy gets an email from "the coraline team" asking for a mailing address. if internet guy complies he gets a mysterious parcel a few days later. he opens up the box to discover a varied assortment of detritus from the movie: stills printed on aged paper, props, bits of puppets, or costumes, a personalized letter, henry selick's autograph, and a key with a password to unlock hidden content on coraline.com. they are each numbered in an edition of 50, so there are still potentially lots of cool bits yet to be delivered. i knew something like this was in the works, but i am quite impressed by the execution of this campaign, not to mention pretty damn envious of the people who are designing and assembling these packages.

since i've been digging around looking for more of these packages online i figured i'd just keep a list of them here for you lot. hopefully all 50 will surface before all is said and done. maybe i'll copy this list to the section on the right for better access in the future. have fun looking at this stuff, it's pretty cool.

::1::2::3::4::5::6::7::8::9::10::
:::11::12::13::14::15::16::17:::
:::18::19::20::21::22::23::24:::
:::25::26::27::28::29::30::31:::
:::32::33::34::35::36::37::38:::
:::39::40::41::42::43::44::45:::
:::46::47::48::49::50:::::::::::::

as for the passwords to coraline.com, these are the ones that are known at this time. i'm pretty sure there are at least a couple more that have yet to surface. most of the content you will see was shot during the last few weeks of shooting. the crew that was hired to shoot these spots did an amazing job. not only did they document what is already inherently cool, (stop motion, duh!) they added a whole other dimension of coolness with how they photographed and edited the footage. i got to help them out with props, and build some little rigs and stuff for some of the shots and it was a real pleasure to help out. my hands are in there somewhere.

stopmotion
an overview of "stuff". the point is its a "handmade" film.
buttoneyes
an introduction to the cast of the film. that's my sketchbook in the beginning!
puppetlove
henry talks about what a puppet's inner life might be like. includes a great piece of animation/pixilation/time lapse by, and featuring phil beglan.
armpithair
suzanne moultin talks about hair. she and jess were miracle workers. mad props!
moustachio
bo henry was the set construction supervisor. i guess people think his mustache is funny. we wired it up. there's an interesting story that goes with this one.
sweaterxxs
this lady knitted some crazy tiny sweaters for coraline, working from her home. its a shame there is no mention of deborah, margaret, paloma, elodie, heidi, fiona, or any of the other foxy costume gals working with us at the studio.

JETLAGGED!

i just got back from england last night and i am so out of it. my pay-as-you-go cell phone's alarm just went off... i should be getting up now, but i'm just about to go to bed... i'm OUT of it.

but it has been a busy and exhilarating week or so, and i'll go into it in greater detail on my trip here very soon. a lot of coraline related stuff happened during the time i was gone, but i'll just mention the trailer for now. you can go here for high res and downloadable versions, or just watch it below. they pretty much show you the 2 minute version of the first two acts, which is kind of spoiler-ish if you ask me, but hey, nobody did. i hope you enjoy it. tons of awesome people lost their minds so you could see this!