Last month I was invited to LA to attend a special screening and press day for Kubo and the Two Strings. I loved seeing the sets and puppets from LAIKA Studios in Portland come to life in the film. You’ll be able to check it out yourself on August 19, 2016 when the movie hits theaters.
Today I’m sharing sharing some behind the scenes photos and fun facts about the making of Kubo and the Two Strings!
Kubo’s puppet had a total of 23,187 rapid prototype faces created. In combination, Kubo had over 48 million possible facial expressions! The Sisters’ costuming was inspired by Tome Gozen, a female samaurai warrier. The cape included 861 laser-etched feathers, each uniquely sized and shaped. The kimono worn by Kubo’s mother was inspired by the women courtiers of the Heian era. Over 2,000 laser-cut pieces of weighted lining are in the kimono, giving it proper the proper weight and folds.The full-scale Giant Skeleton is the largest stop-motion puppet ever built. 70 unique swords were made for the skull and over 1,000 bones were created for the torso’s armor.The Garden of Eyes sequence was created using a single 11 feet tall puppet shot from multiple angles. The animators created a remote interface for the puppet that included a track ball made from a computer mouse and bowling ball.The Moon Beast is LAIKA’s first fully 3D-printed puppet. It was built at a one-fifth scale and composited into shots with the full-scale Kubo. If built to scale, The Moon Beast would have been over 17 feet long!Three versions of the origami sailboat were created, along with six versions of the sail. The surface of the boats were covered in nearly 250,000 laser-cut leaves which took almost 100 hours to apply. The boat sequence took 19 months to shoot!
You can see all of this and more on the big screen on August 19th!
Kubo and the Two Strings is an epic action-adventure set in a fantastical Japan from acclaimed animation studio LAIKA. Clever, kindhearted Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson of Game of Thrones) ekes out a humble living, telling stories to the people of his seaside town including Hosato (George Takei), Akihiro (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), and Kameyo (Academy Award nominee Brenda Vaccaro). But his relatively quiet existence is shattered when he accidentally summons a spirit from his past which storms down from the heavens to enforce an age-old vendetta. Now on the run, Kubo joins forces with Monkey (Academy Award winner Charlize Theron) and Beetle (Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey), and sets out on a thrilling quest to save his family and solve the mystery of his fallen father, the greatest samurai warrior the world has ever known. With the help of his shamisen – a magical musical instrument – Kubo must battle gods and monsters, including the vengeful Moon King (Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes) and the evil twin Sisters (Academy Award nominee Rooney Mara), to unlock the secret of his legacy, reunite his family, and fulfill his heroic destiny.
Director: Travis Knight
Writers: Marc Haimes and Chris Butler (ParaNorman)
Voice Cast: Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, George Takei, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brenda Vaccaro, and Matthew McConaughey