Research - Paranorman

I recently rewatched Paranorman, after deciding it would be a good film to watch based on the idea that I was going to pursue set design for one of the briefs we were given for applied animation. So I think that would be a good talking point for this blog post. But, I just want to quickly mention the art direction for the film is sublime. It has an incredibly charismatic charm to it, whether it's through the architecture, the characters or the humour that is quite well intwined with the dialogue. That is something that caught me off guard now I think about it, the humour in Paranorman is very well timed and I think it is the kind of humour that a large age range can appreciate and understand.

The first thing to note about the sets is that they are very large, when you think of miniature sets and characters LAIKA has taken it to a whole new level, in terms of detail and the overall sheer amount of work that they funnel into their films alone. It's amazing, and quite a wonder how they manage to get so much detail into their characters and environments. I think one of the reasons they go to such lengths is because of the nature of stop motion you really get to see the texture and smaller details come through because of the nature of the medium. Another advantage of stop frame is that you can create anything. Paranorman comes across very realistic in the overall tone of the film, but definitely has a unique touch, a style that comes through in every object and item they hand craft in order to keep pushing the level of detail and quality of their productions. It's hard to describe the style, apart from saying it's almost a nervous illustrator style. The lines aren't straight and sometimes this can be quite subtle unless you're looking for it, but it definitely has a unique feel that comes through in the sets. On a more technical note LAIKA has its own studios that it uses to shoot the stop frame animation. Infact, all of the production on ParaNorman took place at the LAIKA Studios located in Hillsboro, Oregon, in a 151,140 square foot building space. With a crew of over 320 designers, artists, animators and technicians. So a huge range of various disciplines are needed in order to achieve something like this. Furthmore, there were 52 separate shooting units working at almost any given time during the shoot. This just shows the amount of time and precision that has to go into the craft, and it pays off.