How 'Kubo and the Magic Armor' Came to Life in a Portland Hangar

The result of five years of meticulous work by the Laïka studio, 'Kubo and the Magic Armor', a splendid feature film in frame-by-frame animated puppets, will be released in theaters at the first Télérama enfants festival from February 15 to 28 2017. We were able to attend the filming in January 2016, and discover the secrets of an extraordinary creative process.

"I don't know exactly what I can tell you." Screenwriter Chris Butler maintains the suspense in the face of the small group of journalists, who have come from all over the world to discover the backstage of Kubo and the magic armor, the brand new film from the animation studio Laïka. "It's a great epic quest, full of monsters, battles and spells, but above all it's the story of a young boy who seeks the truth about his family. It's this intimate, emotional aspect that I prefer, but I'm not going to ruin everything by revealing the great secrets of the film! »

Since this conversation, we have been able to discover – and adore – this shimmering marvel in stop-motion (frame-by-frame animated puppets), set in a fantastic medieval Japan. But last January, when we arrive at the door of the studio, no one has seen anything yet. And since no film coming out of the Laïka workshops resembles the previous one – from the dreamlikeness of Coraline (2009) to the funny zombies of L'Etrange Pouvoir de Norman (2012) or the Victorian fantasy of the Boxtrolls (2014) – everything remains find out about this brand new Kubo, which the in-house artists are putting the finishing touches to.

Our adventure for us, guests for the day, began early in the morning on a road in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, in the North West of the United States. Very quickly, the city gives way to large forests shrouded in mist, dense and majestic. A truly legendary setting, which leads us straight… to the parking lot of an anonymous ZAC, like there are anywhere on the planet. Temporary disappointment. From the outside, the vast gray building still resembles what it was originally, before being bought and invested ten years ago by the Laïka studio: a stupid plastic factory.

The place jealously conceals its true nature. You have to go beyond a banal hall to suddenly enter another dimension: a huge hive, where everything is meticulously made, transformed, tinkered with, and finally filmed, from A to Z. A stunning paradise of contrasts, between miniature and large scale , between craftsmanship and advanced technology.

In a space so abundant that it seems magically infinite, in an apparent joyous shambles that hides a meticulous organization, cables, computer screens and high-tech cameras rub shoulders with bits of wood, samples of paper and pots of paint, scissors and awls. Everywhere, film sets resembling incredibly detailed doll sets evoke a real Cinecittà for Lilliputians. In this place out of the world and of its ordinary proportions, we progressed to the heart of creation, step by step, as in a real quest.

They measure on average about twenty centimeters, a little less than a Barbie. The puppets are the "stars" of the film: the young Kubo, black hair and blindfold, but also his companions, a stocky monkey and a funny beetle-samurai, and his enemies, two slender and impassive ninja sisters. Each of these characters, even the most secondary, represents years of aesthetic research and manual and technical work. Because, of course, it's not about making simple dolls, but about creating real “mini-actors” whose every gesture must be expressive and coherent, each part of which can be easily manipulated by an animator. For this, we generally first make a fully articulated metal "skeleton", which we then dress in silicone, fabric, foam, sometimes even hair (like monkey fur), as needed.

Georgina Hayns, who heads the puppet department, presents her creations to us, lined up in front of us as if for a fabulous improvised exhibition. We stop at the “wicked” ninja twins, fascinating little creatures, with their impassive masks inspired by nô theater and their large black capes. They alone sum up the ingenuity of Laïka's artists, their unique blend of know-how, inspiration, resourcefulness and high standards. On each cape, entirely made by hand, one hundred and eighty-three “feathers” laser-cut from large sheets of plastic lined with tissue paper, hold together thanks to a skilful canvas… of piano strings!

Chiselled down to the smallest detail, each figurine must imperatively be, like real living beings, subject to the laws of physics and anatomy, down to the smallest quivering of their mop of hair. Georgina Hayns shows us several copies, quite different – ​​with and without wings, with more or less arms –, of the beetle-samurai: “Some characters must accomplish things that a single puppet cannot always do. This one, for example, will know how to "walk", but will not be physically able to sit down or fly away. Sometimes we have to cheat for certain sequences, change parts of the body, or even create an entire version completely different and adapted to the specific movement requested. We call it a "double", as for real actors! »

If, in addition, we take into account the fact that several animators must be able to work simultaneously with the same hero on several different stages and sets, we understand better why all the puppets are still mass-produced: "We have more hundred puppets, and thirty just for Kubo! The manufacture of the first took us between six and nine months. Once we have taken our bearings, solved the problems, forged the model, things go much faster. »

The time to tell yourself that thirty Kubo is much more than we imagined, here we are faced with a surreal spectacle. Carefully sheltered in elegant black boxes lined with velvet, like jewel cases, a multitude of heads are smiling, grimacing, or displaying melancholy pouts. A little further on, there are only jaws, or even eyebrows, frowning, raised, thoughtful, ironically arched. A very strange collection created… by a machine.

As Georgina Hayns says, “The basics of building a stop-motion puppet will always remain the same – some are as old as cinema itself! But we now also have a formidable technological toolbox at our disposal.” To make all these puppets more expressive, Laïka has indeed decided to innovate radically. The studio has teamed up with Stratasys, the market leader in 3D printers, to develop a revolutionary method. For each hero, the computer predicts and combines a bewildering number of possible nuances: several million facial expressions, just for Kubo alone. "That's more than human beings have!" exclaims Brian McLean, head of the “Rapid Prototype” sector at Laïka, who is in charge of this little technological miracle.

Then, all you have to do is pick from this monstrous database the ranges of emotions you need for the film, and the 3D printer does the rest: tens of thousands of plastic and color heads, the animators then place, frame by frame (at the rate of twenty-four per second!), on the puppets. “This process allowed us to achieve a finesse that is totally unique in this form of animation,” adds our guide. We are currently the only ones in the world to use it. »

Costume designer Deborah Cook waits for us in front of a large wooden panel, where are pinned jumbled up pieces of miniature armor, shimmering pieces of Japanese fabric, images of characters from the film and photos of traditional costumes . Kubo and her mother's kimonos, all the rich clothes in the film for villagers, wizards and lords, she created with her team. From scratch. In this type of animation, the very texture of the fabric must be scaled to the wearer. No question of seeing on Kubo a weft or ordinary stitches, far too big for him. You have to make everything, reinvent everything.

Additional challenge, the outfits, like the puppets, are also intended to be animated: it has to "fit" just right. A sleeve effect, the undulation of a dress, everything must be precisely planned. "In Kubo, we had to do what we usually avoid like the plague, because it's very complicated to succeed, smiles the costume designer: loose, loose, floating outfits, which do not necessarily stick to the movements of the body. It was necessary to trick, to introduce wires into the folds – we call that “snakes” – even a whole mechanical system, to create the illusion of a natural movement. »

For the both magical and traditional look of her little medieval adventurers, Deborah Cook has documented the Japan of yesteryear – she shows us, among other things, all her attempts at embroidered coats of arms, fifty shades of black scarab on a red background – but also today's: "I consulted a lot of books, and I also visited Tokyo, to immerse myself, observe the colors, the patterns... and the people: those who wear kimonos as in the past, but also young people, their way of adapting customs to modern life, such as tying a scarf around the waist like an obi, the traditional Japanese belt. My inspiration was nourished by all these discoveries. »

Thus fashioned, "printed" and dressed, the puppets only have to land in the universe that an army of demiurges have created for them. From the smallest wicker basket to the most spectacular statue, all the decor and accessories are made on site. Here, we work – with a magnifying glass! – iron, wood, or silicone. Mini-jewels and micro-furniture, swords, wells, flags, lanterns are fashioned – each time in several spare copies, sometimes in several sizes – a dream of a crazy model maker, which brings together almost ten thousand accessories. We do cabinetmaking, welding and sculpture, and since, in the tale, Kubo has the magic gift of animating paper beings, the perfectionists at Laïka even did an origami course, and learned to fold their own "cottes" in tyvek, a synthetic fabric that imitates paper, but stronger.

Nelson Lowry, who oversees sets and props, enthusiastically explains the whole process, amid brightly lit workbenches, where his team works without looking up, amid an incredible jumble of tools and materials. A decorator is applying, with infinite delicacy, a thin layer of brownish lacquer on a tiny object. “We wanted everything to be covered with a sort of patina, as if aged by the centuries. It's our own interpretation of Wabi-sabi, this Japanese aesthetic principle that values ​​the wear and tear of time, beauty in imperfection. »

The whole film is steeped in Japanese culture in general, and the woodcuts of the contemporary painter Kioshi Saito in particular. Each decor is inspired by it, taking up its rough and vegetal textures, the soft color contrasts. These sumptuous plateaus, a melancholy cemetery nestled in a forest as high as three apples, a Shogun's palace or a village lit by a string of lanterns, represent the most spectacular, the most playful part of the walk. Everything is there, from the smallest parchment to the smallest (really very small) tuft of grass, placed on vast "tables".

For the purposes of filming, each “location” is isolated by huge, heavy black curtains, we move from one to the other like we would visit the stages of a megalomaniac doll theatre. Behind some, we have erected a large green screen, to be able to add digital decorations to this artisanal work. This is the hybrid magic of Laïka, which also houses a department dedicated to the latest special effects. The happy marriage of pixels and Wabi-sabi, in a way.

“Our goal is to 'stick' as much as possible to the aesthetics and textures of stop-motion, explains Brian Emerson, the person in charge of this section. The film begins with a scene of a storm on an ocean made entirely in digital images. Above all, it was not a question of creating realistic waves, a "photographic" water effect that would clash with the rest, but on the contrary, of finding by computer the kind of effect that, for example, a DIY decor would produce based on plastic bags and gelatin. Way to save time, efficiency, and to afford everything that would be too expensive, too complicated, even impossible in the animation "by hand": add a crowd of "virtual" villagers to the real puppets, erasing any flaws… “Our work boils down to a funny paradox: if it's really successful, no one should notice it on screen. »

The thirty animators present at Laïka each shoot four to five seconds of film per week – that is to say about a minute and a half between them. In this incredible ant work at twenty-four micro-movements per second, everyone has their specialty: characters, monsters, animals, or even those famous facial expressions chosen on the computer and output from the 3D printer. They come from all over the world to exercise this delicate and curiously perilous art: “There is a lot of preparation, rehearsals before realizing the plan itself, explains the French Florian Perinelle. You have to adjust the puppet, plan everything you will need. Because once filming, you can't go back to correct any errors. If you make a mistake, you have to start all over again. »

“It is essential to have a good command of the physical laws of animation – movement, gravity… – and to know how to make the puppet 'play', bring it to life”, adds his Quebec colleague Philippe Tardif. On the screen, Kubo and his “partners” indeed seem quite alive. But observing live an animator at work, imprinting minute movements on a large origami chicken or part of a face, is like trying to stare at a flower long enough to see it bloom. Miraculous indeed, but more imperceptible than spectacular.

Between the beginning of the project and the final clap, at the beginning of the summer, the gestation of Kubo and the magic armor, sheltered in this singular place camouflaged in the factory, lasted five years. We only spent one day there, the equivalent of barely twelve seconds of film, but enough to make memories for a lifetime. In the evening, returning to Portland through the forests, we thought that Kubo, finally, had given us all his family secrets.