In preparation for when Laika releases their stop-motion animated film this year, I started reading the first book in the Wildwood Chronicles. I will provide a review of the trilogy when I’m done, so here’s a couple of tidbits instead.
I long time ago when I bought the A Series of Unfortunate Events novels, I thought it was neat that the publisher varied the width of the pages so it has an uneven, hand-published look to each book. It’s not as neat now because I happened to get a copy of Wildwood in the box set where three of the pages are slightly skewed. It’s only about a 2mm skew, but that extra exposed section of the paper is getting bent. That’s bugging me because it’s noticeable when you look at it and if I cut off the excess, that will also be noticeable due to the edge of the paper being too clean compared to the rest of the pages.
Second, Laika has become a pioneer in stop-motion animation, using 3D-printed interchangeable eye and mouth pieces to increase the expression and range of movement when the characters talk. They also film “on the ones”, which means they film at the standard 24 frames a second, rather than “on the twos, threes or fours” (12, 8 or 6 frames/second) for very fluid motion.
Think back to the last stop-motion animated movie you saw. How many characters did you usually see on screen at the same time? Was it just a couple? Probably. For their Wildwood film, Laika will have another first: a large battle sequence using many puppets. Can’t wait.