Coraline (movie, 2009)

Coraline

Watched Coraline today. Pretty good. Better in first half. Not as good as i expected though, because i read the summary of the story on Wikipedia first and i think i'd love it. I didn't particular find the animation that spectacular, nor the story extraordinarily fascinating.

This movie reminds me of Pan's Labyrinth , also a fantastic film. I think i liked Pan's Labyrinth better.

The technology of this film, Stop-motion, is rather fascinating. Basically, you just take still photos and sequence them together. I couldn't imagine how such method could make a good, smooth, animation, but apparently it can.

Typically, stop-animation is done using clays for characters, because clay is easy to mold. This film is done by 3D printing to create models. Amazing technology. Imagine, in order to create this film, the have to build miniature sets, and take tens of thousands photos of it. Quite amazing. Consider what it takes to build the miniature sets, little houses, chairs, dolls… in a sense, they are high quality toys, made by dedicated professional artisans invidually for this project, a magnitude superior than those mass marketed miniature toys you could by in toy stores. Fascinating. I wonder if they sell those sets and artifacts after the film.