Creating a feature-length stop-motion film is an ambitious feat. When Laika Studios was filming Boxtrolls, it took them about one week to shoot 40 seconds of footage. You need a dedicated team of artists and filmmakers to bring these poseable worlds to life. Luckily, advancements in 3D technology have taken loads of work off of these filmmakers’ hands.
Historically, the facial expressions of stop-motion characters have been sculpted out of clay using tiny tools and deft hands. This leaves you with hundreds upon thousands of individual faces to craft by hand; the more expressive you want your characters to be, the more time you have to invest into sculpting a broad range of emotions. However, when creating their cult-classic film Coraline, Laika realized they could use 3D technology to not only speed up this process, but to expand the potential of stop motion as a whole.
Laika modeled and printed over 200,000 facial expressions for the protagonist of Coraline using a 3D printer. These faces were also printed in full color, which relieved artists from the painstaking duty of painting expressions by hand.
Since then, Laika has continued to rely on 3D printing to make their characters more lively than ever before. Their latest film, Missing Link, utilizes the same technology to bring their leading sasquatch to life. You would never suspect these lovable and doll-like characters at Laika were extruded from the nozzle of a 3D printer -- but combined with the human touch that gives these characters warmth and vitality, filmmakers can now create more vibrant characters, and tell more inspiring stories.
Some have argued that stop-motion films will eventually die out due to the impractical amount of time and resources needed to create a single film, and their tendency to underperform at the box office. But thanks to the growing accessibility of 3D technology, we can create these films with more magic and efficiency than ever before -- a historic medium saved, thanks to a revolutionary innovation.
By Nia Laureano @ Womp
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https://medium.com/womp-xyz/can-3d-printing-save-the-stop-motion-industry-cf8c9f301c3b