By Sarah Sluis
Coraline releases this Friday, and, its creepiness level is right up there with director Henry Selick's 1993 movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film I found a little too disturbing and unsettling when I saw it on the upper side of grade school (to be fair, I was much more fright-averse than average). For an adult, however, Selick's tone conjures up just the right amount of heebie-jeebies. In the age of computer animation, it's astonishing to see the meticulous, detail-oriented work that goes into such a production--of note, it's the first stop-motion film to be filmed in 3D. Our Maria Garcia interviewed director Selick here about the filmmaking process, and our Executive Editor Kevin Lally reviewed the final product here, and both stories are worth checking out.
In Garcia's interview, Selick touches upon that stop-motion, Chucky-like quality of puppets:
things in the story more charming' and 'add creepiness to the
charming stuff'"
In Coraline, puppets not only depict the action, but have a sort of role in the film itself. Coraline's Other Mother and Other Father have buttons for eyes, giving them unchanging, penetrating expressions. Over at Wired, they have a slide show of the production process. Pink cherry blossoms, for example, are hand-painted pieces of popcorn--that took eight hundred hours to paint. Grass is painted fake hair, facial expressions (which number 25,000) come from 350 types of eyebrows and 700 types of mouths, and steam is cotton that defies gravity through hair spray.
After the jump, more photos from the Coraline production.
The popcorn-decorated trees
Piano wire mustache
Creating Coraline
Cotton held up with hairspray
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