LAIKA’s ‘Wildwood’ Creates the Most Complex Stop-Motion Puppet Ever Made

Avatar photoValentina Kraljik
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LAIKA has dedicated nearly two decades to redefining the limits of stop-motion animation, transforming meticulous handcrafted puppetry into an art form that can compete with fully digital blockbusters. Each new release from the studio tends to surpass the previous one in technical ambition, and ‘Wildwood’ seems poised to set an entirely new standard.

Adapted from the cherished novel by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, the film has already sparked excitement due to its impressive scale, featuring a runtime of 140 minutes, 136 sets, and 231 practical puppets, making it reportedly the longest stop-motion animated film ever created. Among this vast array of handcrafted characters, one puppet stands out as a remarkable engineering feat.

The golden eagle in LAIKA’s ‘Wildwood’ is one of the most intricate stop-motion characters ever constructed, standing approximately two and a half feet tall with a wingspan of five feet. To bring this majestic bird to life on screen, three separate puppets were crafted, requiring over 12,000 feathers in total.

Known in the film as The General, this eagle character demanded an unprecedented level of craftsmanship compared to LAIKA’s usual humanoid puppets, given the complexity involved in mimicking realistic bird flight in miniature. Each feather was meticulously designed and installed by hand, representing a significant investment of time across the puppet’s three distinct builds.

This attention to detail reflects a broader trend within the film’s puppet department, where LAIKA utilized 3D-printed skeletal armatures to enable puppeteers to achieve more lifelike, fluid performances throughout production. With 54 hero characters among the film’s total of 231 puppets, The General stands as one of the most technically challenging builds in a project already characterized by its ambitious technicality.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the eagle’s construction is the breather mechanism integrated within the puppet, a system of internal mechanisms that allows animators to simulate the bird realistically inhaling and exhaling between shots. This kind of subtle, continuous motion is notoriously difficult to replicate convincingly in stop-motion, where every micro-movement must be adjusted frame by frame rather than rendered digitally.

Incorporating a functional breather into a character already adorned with thousands of individual feathers showcases just how far LAIKA has pushed the physical engineering behind ‘Wildwood’s’ puppets. It’s an impressive technical achievement that may go unnoticed by many viewers, yet it contributes to making the character feel more alive on screen.

The golden eagle plays a pivotal role in ‘Wildwood’s’ narrative, which follows teenagers Prue and Curtis as they embark on a quest into an enchanted forest near Portland to rescue Prue’s kidnapped infant brother from a group of crows. Throughout their journey, the duo encounters various woodland creatures entangled in a larger conflict within the forest’s hidden society.

The film’s voice cast features Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Prue, Jacob Tremblay as Curtis, along with Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, and Angela Bassett, among others, forming a sprawling ensemble that matches the film’s grand scale. Director Travis Knight, working from a screenplay by Chris Butler, leads a production that began back in September 2021 at LAIKA’s Oregon studio.

With its record-setting runtime, hundreds of practical puppets, and a golden eagle character crafted with thousands of hand-placed feathers and an internal breathing mechanism, ‘Wildwood’ is shaping up to be one of the most technically ambitious stop-motion films ever created. The film is set to premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 11 before hitting U.S. theaters on October 23.

For a studio renowned for pushing the boundaries of puppetry, ‘Wildwood’s’ golden eagle may serve as one of the clearest illustrations of just how far handcrafted animation can go.

LAIKA’s commitment to investing heavily in a single character isn’t new for the studio, which has built its reputation on blending traditional puppetry with advanced fabrication techniques. Films like ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ similarly relied on intricate hexapod rigs and motion-capture-assisted puppeteering to achieve sequences that would be impossible with conventional stop-motion methods alone.

This continuity suggests that ‘Wildwood’ is not merely pursuing novelty for its own sake, but rather building on years of accumulated technical expertise to tell a story that genuinely necessitates this level of craftsmanship.

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