Dark Characters, Made Darker in 3D
Coraline is a just plain creepy book. The movie (www.coraline.com) may be all the creepier largely thanks to the dour details of the puppet characters populating the stop-motion animation sequences—models—that were printed on 3D machines from Objet Geometries (www.objet.com).
Coraline is a just plain creepy book. The movie (www.coraline.com) may be all the creepier largely thanks to the dour details of the puppet characters populating the stop-motion animation sequences—models—that were printed on 3D machines from Objet Geometries (www.objet.com).
Artists with animation studio LAIKA (www.laika.com; Portland, OR) used Objet’s Eden260, Eden500V and the Connex500 to create thousands of models and replacement faces for the puppets, as well as props, such as silverware, doorknobs, door hinges, and food spreads. The replacement facial expressions created for title character Coraline could be manipulated to portray more than 200,000 facial expressions. Compare that to the some 800 possible expressions available to the lead puppet in 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, which, like Coraline, was directed by Henry Selick.
Objet notes that Coraline marks the first time 3D printed replacement faces were used in a feature film.
