Stop-motion animation is a painstaking process that not many people understand. This entertaining video explains what went into making Paranorman, the new stop-motion horror comedy that was created by the same team that made Coraline.
Paranorman is about a little boy who can see and interact with the dead. When a 300-year-old witch’s curse threatens to destroy the town by calling upon it a septet of deadly zombies, it is up to Norman to save the day.
Travis Knight, the producer and lead animator, calls Paranorman the most ambitious stop-motion animated movie ever made. The sets are enormous and exquisitely detailed.
During a discussion of how the artists achieve facial expressions – they do it by replacing a portion of each character’s face for each split-second shot – one of the creators calls it “an insane process.”
It is the audience, of course, that determines whether all of this meticulousness ultimately is worth it.
The PG-rated movie opens in 3D and 3D on Aug. 17.
Here is the trailer:
