Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/739236
s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 6 c g w 1 9 C harted across raging seas, bam- boo jungles, and mountain ranges ravaged by howling blizzards, a lit- tle boy's journey of self-discovery in Kubo and the Two Strings whisks audienc- es away to something never before seen in the history of cinema: a stop-motion epic. For Oregon-based Laika, the ground- breaking studio behind Coraline, ParaNor- man, and Boxtrolls, the film represents the culmination of a decade pioneering its unique amalgam of rapid prototyping (RP), live-action puppetry, motion control, and state-of-the-art CG. Not only has Laika's "hybridized" form of filmmaking liberated stop motion from its "tabletop" feel, but through new advancements in RP, it can now draw increasingly subtle, heart-wrench- ing performances from a simple, resin- based face. Like a work of cinematic origami, Kubo and the Two Strings folds together cine- matic and literary influences once far afield from the world of stop motion. Set in a mythical ancient Japan, the story follows a boy named Kubo as he cares for his ailing mother in a high, clifftop cave overlook- ing the sea. There, she regales him with stories of his late father, Hanzo, before slipping into deep spells of sorrow cast by the rising moon. Pining for his warrior father, Kubo ventures each morning into the village square and captivates the crowds with his over-idealized fantasies of Hanzo's exploits in battle, all of which he brings to life with folded origami at the strum of his magic shamisen. In a failed effort to commune with his father, Kubo visits the cemetery during the Obon festival honoring the dead, and casts a rice-paper lantern onto the lake. Hoping to guide his father's spirit home, he instead un- leashes the vengeful spirits of his mother's two sisters, who come screaming from the skies to settle an old vendetta harbored by Kubo's grandfather. Alone, running for his life, Kubo is soon joined by Monkey, a motherly simian voiced by Charlize Theron, and Matthew McCo- naughey's Beetle, an insect samurai who takes up the boy's mission in a flush of knight errantry. Together, they set out to banish the Sisters by finding three treasures le behind by Kubo's father. To fulfill the quest, they must brave a gauntlet of perils that include the blizzard of the Far Lands, the monstrous skeleton guarding the Hall of Bones, a raging sea storm and the under- water Garden of Eyes, and the horrifying Moon Beast – a luminescent reptile that worms through the sky and became Laika's first fully rapid-prototyped character. H I G H - R E S O L U T I O N P R O T O T Y P I N G Kubo's only weapon on his journey is his shamisen. With a strum of the strings, a ripple of magic emanates outward, animating his origami into a menagerie of living paper wonders: a flock of birds, a giant chicken, a miniature samurai Hanzo that guides his way. Indeed, the film is not only a love letter to the art of animation, but to Japanese culture itself, where every frame is freighted with ref- erences to Noh theatre, origami, ukiyo-e, and Edo-period doll making. Most importantly, the design of every character, prop, and envi- ronment in the film is simplified and textured to reflect the modest, graphical aesthetic of Japanese woodblock printing, particularly that of artist Kiyoshi Saito. Saito's process involved placing a drawing over blocks of wood, carving out a relief of lines, and using the blocks to create an impression on paper, usually in a muted color palette. He would also integrate the texture of the wood grain into every painting, a practice Laika's production designers and CG artists diligently followed. "We painted the pattern into every single asset we made," says CG look development lead Eric Wachtman, "right down to the cloth on some of the digital characters. We used [The Foundry's] Mari, and also made a procedural version of it in [Pixar's] RenderMan." Saito's graphical shapes and bold ab- stractions not only inform the set designs, particularly the angular design of Kubo's seaside cliff, but the designs of the char- acters as well, whose striking silhouettes, redolent of Japanese manga and Hayao Miyazaki's characters, had to be instantly readable against the stark, sprawling ex- panses of sea and snow. However, honoring this aesthetic in the characters, particularly Beetle and Monkey, baffled current color RP technology, which couldn't cope with the intricate, hard-edged designs. Furthermore, Knight was seeking a level of subtlety and nuance in the facial performances far beyond anything Laika had ever attempted. This would entail printing thousands of colored expressions for the mouth and brow to reach the millions of pos- sible facial expressions needed for a finely calibrated performance. While Kubo was in development, the only color 3D printer on the market was 3D Systems' Z650, a powder/gyp- sum-based printer Laika used on ParaNorman and Boxtrolls. It could be used for the human characters in Kubo, says Director of Rapid Proto- typing Brian McLean, but not for Monkey, Beetle, and the Moon Beast. "We would have to find a new technology to achieve the director's vision, or force a redesign of those characters to soen those hard edges," he says. For McLean and Technical Director Rob Ducey, the latter was not an option. Alternatively, Stratasys – whose plastic, non-color polyjet printers had been used to cast Coraline's hand-painted faces – was beta-testing the Connex3, the first color multi-material resin printer. Alas, it could only print three of five colors: white, black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. "So right off the bat, we were running up against serious limitations in the way color KUBO'S MAGICAL SHAMISEN BRINGS TO LIFE ORIGAMI, WHICH TAKES MANY FORMS, INCLUDING A FLOCK OF BIRDS.