Go Behind the (Crazy-Complex) Scenes of The Boxtrolls

Brian McLean, creative supervisor of replacement animation and engineering, in the Face Library at Laika, which houses tens of thousands of 3D-printed face parts. Though many of the face combinations are used in multiple scenes, on The Boxtrolls, for the first time in Laika’s history, the team created hundreds of unique faces that are used in a single scene and then never again. (Expand the gallery for more details.) Jose Mandojana

Brian McLean, creative supervisor of replacement animation and engineering, in the Face Library at Laika, which houses tens of thousands of 3D-printed face parts. Though many of the face combinations are used in multiple scenes, on The Boxtrolls, for the first time in Laika’s history, the team created hundreds of unique faces that are used in a single scene and then never again. (Keep an eye out for the details in Snatcher’s grotesque allergic reaction, which includes what McLean and his team call the "sub-dermal worm" and the "lip pop." Truly horrifying!)

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Eggs, the central character in The Boxtrolls, has 1,400,000 possible facial expressions in the film. Each face was 3D-printed in color, then coated in superglue and sanded to perfection. Laika's color printing process has improved greatly since Laika’s Coraline; back then, artists had to hand-paint each of the heroine’s freckles on each of her faces. Jose Mandojana

Eggs, the central character in The Boxtrolls, has 1,400,000 possible facial expressions in the film. Each face was 3D-printed in color, then coated in superglue and sanded to perfection. Laika's color printing process has improved greatly since Laika’s Coraline; back then, artists had to hand-paint each of the heroine’s freckles on each of her faces.

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Boxtroll Fish in the hands of an animator armed with an Exacto knife. All of the puppet’s movements are manipulated by hand, even their tiny eyeballs. Each Boxtroll is named for the label on his box, and Fish’s sardine can gives him a nice bit of sartorial flair. Jose Mandojana

Boxtroll Fish in the hands of an animator armed with an Exacto knife. All of the puppet’s movements are manipulated by hand, even their tiny eyeballs. Each Boxtroll is named for the label on his box, and Fish’s sardine can gives him a nice bit of sartorial flair.

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Brad Schiff, animation supervisor, with Boxtrolls Fish and Shoe. According to directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, Schiff is known at Laika for pushing puppets to their limits—he broke an arm off the Mecha Drill during one tricky shot. Jose Mandojana

Brad Schiff, animation supervisor, with Boxtrolls Fish and Shoe. According to directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, Schiff is known at Laika for pushing puppets to their limits—he broke an arm off the Mecha Drill during one tricky shot.

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Fish and Shoe on the elaborate underground cavern set where the Boxtrolls live and work. Jose Mandojana

Fish and Shoe on the elaborate underground cavern set where the Boxtrolls live and work.

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Steve Emerson, Annie Pomeranz, and Brian Van’t Hul all work in Laika's special effects department; Emerson and Van’t Hul are VFX supervisors and Pomeranz is a VFX producer. Each and every Laika film is a combination of stop-motion and CG. Jose Mandojana

Steve Emerson, Annie Pomeranz, and Brian Van’t Hul all work in Laika's special effects department; Emerson and Van’t Hul are VFX supervisors and Pomeranz is a VFX producer. Each and every Laika film is a combination of stop-motion and CG, but it’s not just the climactic scenes, explosions, or fires that are enabled by CG. The VFX team also creates background characters, paints in tile roofs, windowpanes, and the illustrative shading of the night sky. Even the colorful bugs the Boxtrolls eat are all CG. "We always need to make sure that what we’re doing isn’t upstaging the real elements in the shot," says Van’t Hul. "They’re complements to what’s happening."

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Mr. Trout (voiced by Nick Frost) and Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade) on set. The two act as the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the movie, contemplating the very nature of good and evil while in the midst of the action. (Make sure to stay through the end of the credit sequence for a bonus scene involving them.) Jose Mandojana

Mr. Trout (voiced by Nick Frost) and Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade) on set. The two act as the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the movie, contemplating the very nature of good and evil while in the midst of the action. (Make sure to stay through the end of the credit sequence for a bonus scene involving them.)

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Tory Bryant, the 3D color development texture lead, shading Snatcher’s face. The careful color shading of each face starts in 2D before it’s modeled in 3D and then printed. Jose Mandojana

Tory Bryant, the 3D color development texture lead, shading Snatcher’s face. The careful color shading of each face starts in 2D before it’s modeled in 3D and then printed.

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Lord Portley-Rind in his ballroom, which is the setting for the most complicated scene in The Boxtrolls: Between puppets and CG characters, the setpiece includes 150 characters, elaborate waltzing, and Snatcher’s heated pursuit of Eggs. Jose Mandojana

Lord Portley-Rind in his ballroom, which is the setting for the most complicated scene in The Boxtrolls: Between puppets and CG characters, the setpiece includes 150 characters, elaborate waltzing, and Snatcher’s heated pursuit of Eggs.

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Laika CEO and animator Travis Knight on the set with characters Snatcher and Winnie. In one week of work, the average animator at Laika completed about 90 individual frames, which works out to about 3.7 seconds’ worth of footage. Jose Mandojana

Laika CEO and animator Travis Knight on the set with characters Snatcher and Winnie. In one week of work, the average animator at Laika completed about 90 individual frames, which works out to about 3.7 seconds’ worth of footage.

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Animation rigging supervisor Oliver Jones with the Mecha Drill—the largest puppet Laika has ever created, and the biggest stop-motion puppet rigs ever made. Jose Mandojana

Animation Rigging Supervisor Oliver Jones with the Mecha Drill—the largest puppet Laika has ever created, and the biggest stop-motion puppet rigs ever made. Jones and his team built 8 of these total for the production, 5 of them fully functional, 80 pounds, 5 feet tall, and made of more than 600 plastic, steel, and metal parts. Each Mecha Drill was motorized and controlled by the animator. The stop-motion flames "burning" in the Mecha’s furnace were created by a working iPad displaying a loop video.

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Costume designer Deborah Cook holding Winnie in the ballroom as Lord Portley-Rind and Eggs look on. Cook was able to imdulge her fancy on The Boxtrolls, as the Edwardian-Victorian era vibe with a twist meant she could put her own spin on classic elements. Jose Mandojana

Costume designer Deborah Cook holding Winnie in the ballroom as Lord Portley-Rind and Eggs look on. Cook was able to imdulge her fancy on The Boxtrolls, as the Edwardian-Victorian era vibe with a twist meant she could put her own spin on classic elements. "There’s so much tailoring involved in Edwardian clothing," says Cook. "But then it could also be fantastical." The influences for the costumes ranged from the Ballet Russes of the early 1900s to the exaggeratedly pointy Mexican dance boots of recent times.

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Art director Curt Enderle and some of the buildings of Cheesebridge. (Note the many cheese puns in the film—like the stores Fun & Fancy Brie, and The Cultured Curd.) Jose Mandojana

Art director Curt Enderle and some of the buildings of Cheesebridge. (Note the many cheese puns in the film—like the stores Fun & Fancy Brie, and The Cultured Curd.) The 79 Boxtrolls sets were built by 13 model builders, 12 carpenters, 9 scenic painters, 8 set dressers, and 4 Laikans dedicated to the greenery (they created 24 different types of weeds for the movie).

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As the creative supervisor for puppet fabrication, Georgina Hayns, shown here with many of The Boxtrolls' puppets, has to make sure that Laika’s characters look beautiful, that they fit into the world of the film, but also that they function the way the animators need them to. Jose Mandojana

As the creative supervisor for puppet fabrication, Georgina Hayns, shown here with many of The Boxtrolls' puppets, has to make sure that Laika’s characters look beautiful, that they fit into the world of the film, but also that they function the way the animators need them to. So when she first learned about these little characters in boxes, she thought, "we’ve got all this space we can hide stuff in!" (The "stuff" would be armatures that allow the animators to move the puppets.) But then the directors explained that they for each Boxtroll, they needed the head, the arms, and the legs to be able to retract into their boxes. The boxes themselves were made out of silicone—bendable, but with the look of cardboard—as real cardboard or paper would disintegrate after being manipulated repeatedly by the animators.

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The Boxtrolls is the first period piece from stop-motion animation studio Laika (Coraline, ParaNorman), and the first of their films to include creatures—the terrifying(ly adorable) subterranean dwellers who wear boxes. It’s the tale of the stratified town of Cheesebridge, where the rich live up high, nibbling piles of fromage and waltzing their nights away, and the misunderstood Boxtrolls dwell far below, scrounging for bugs and mechanical parts. The heart of the story is a boy, Eggs, who straddles both societies.

The movie is set in a Dickensian fantasy world, which allowed the entire crew of Laikans—hundreds of them—to give their imaginations free rein. The sets and costumes, the flexible puppets, the lushly shaded 3D-printed faces—they were all made by hand. To really understand how this laborious, intensive art form works, you need to meet the people who make such a production possible, from the set fabrication coordinator to the CG facial animator. Here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at some of the talented technicians and artists who bring a movie like this to life—by hand, over many years, one frame at a time.