There was a behind the scenes video I saw a while ago that discussed how a big difference is in what you see in the movie is how it was made. If it was filmed using a camera, it gets things for free when they’re on location: buildings, scenery, weather, background crowds, and so forth. If it’s an animated movie, “nothing is free.” Everything you see in the movie is put there by a person.
Now, if it’s a CGI animated movie or a digitally-drawn animated movie, there are tools available that can make it easier, such as a program that generates trees. Another is the process that took the 3D character of Peni Parker in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and rendered it to make it look like she was a 2D character.
Regardless of the tools, there’s still people making decisions on how to use them. There’s no “push a button and the computer does everything”… yet. A.I. is getting us closer, but right now, the results aren’t good enough. There’s mistakes and things that don’t look right. Watch the Firefly Sea Shanty at the 1:30 mark. The real Kaylee would never disrespect an engine like that.
And that brings us to the type of movie that definitely gets nothing for free and where a person is definitely involved in everything, making every decision for every frame: stop-motion animation.
The company that’s the leader in the field, in my opinion, is Laika. They are also a company that films “on the ones”, meaning they animate at 24 frames a second, instead of on the twos, threes or fours (12 frames/second, 8 or 6).
You may have seen various behind the scenes features about stop-motion animation that give you general ideas about how the process works. Laika just released another featurette that makes it clearer exactly how much goes into making one, in a way that changes it from concepts to full understanding of how enormous it all is. It also shows why Laika needed another year to finish the film.
Wildwood premieres on October 23, 2026. The Wildwood: Follow the Crows outdoor art show opens in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, August 7, 2006. The official website is at wildwoodmovie.com.
