LAIKA's SIGGRAPH talk details a CG-groom-to-silicone-cast fur pipeline for Wildwood's creature cast

A SIGGRAPH Talks 2025 presentation from LAIKA groom artist Micah Henrie gives the first technical account of how Wildwood furs its non-hero creature cast. Rather than hand-applying fiber (the route used for the film's golden-eagle puppet, The General, and its roughly 3,794 real feathers) or painting fur onto a puppet's skin, LAIKA built what Henrie calls a "groundbreaking groom pipeline": VFX designs each creature's fur first as a digital CG groom, the same kind of hair system a fully-digital film would use, and that groom then guides silicone casting of real, physical fur onto the practical puppet. Henrie describes the payoff as scale -- furring "dozens of creatures across hero, background, and crowd roles" for the studio's biggest production -- while keeping the cast fur's "anisotropic characteristics" and "seamless integration between practical and digital elements."

For the database, the durable fact is the pipeline itself -- a CG groom used as manufacturing information for a physical puppet's fur, distinct from LAIKA's existing digital-to-3D-printed-part fabrication route -- rather than any single Wildwood press cycle. Folded into the Wiki as cg-groom-silicone-cast-fur-fabrication ahead of the film's October 23, 2026 theatrical release, when broader coverage is likely to focus on story and marketing rather than this fabrication detail.