I’m looking at a box of faces. That sounds a little creepy, but it is a little creepy looking at the box of carefully arranged miniature resin masks that LAIKA visual effects artist Brian McLean is showing me, and a handful of other journalists touring LAIKA’s labyrinthine studio in Portland, Oregon. For one: they don’t have eyes, because they’re designed to be magnetically popped onto a puppet of Prue McKeel, the teenage girl protagonist of Wildwood. The fantasy epic is the latest feature film from the independent animation studio co-founded by Kubo and the Two Strings (and now Masters of the Universe) director Travis Knight.
“One of the great joys for me in doing stop motion is the sort of high-tech, low-tech [practice].”
