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How Laika Made an 18-Foot Stop-Motion Puppet For ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’

Laika, the Oregon-based stop-motion animation house, usually films its movies using hand-crafted puppets that are just 6-12 inches tall. But for its latest film, Kubo and the Two Strings, which Focus Features will release, Aug. 19, it went in the opposite direction, creating an 18-foot tall stop motion puppet that’s believed to be the largest stop-motion puppet ever built.

“It was by far the largest puppet we ever created,” VFX supervisor Steve Emerson said today at the Siggraph CG confab taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center, at which the Kubo filmmakers offered a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie. “It seemed insane so of course we did it.”

While visiting one of the slums of Cape Town, South Africa, I was fascinated by the gentleness of this lady in such a rough environment.