LAIKA unveils Wildwood's fully-articulated eagle puppet at Annecy

LAIKA opened "Wildwood: Discovering a Handcrafted World," a first-look exhibition at Annecys Galerie de la Cite (running through September 27, 2026), built around a miniature set inspired by Portlands real Pittock Mansion and a puppet called The General -- a golden-eagle-inspired character measuring 86 cm from beak to tail with a 163 cm wingspan. The puppet is LAIKAs first built with fully articulated wings designed to open and fold like a real birds, and is dressed with 3,794 individually positioned feathers drawn from a batch of more than 16,500 cut during production. Director and CEO Travis Knight framed the film, due in US theaters via Fathom Entertainment on October 23, 2026, as "the biggest universe LAIKA has ever created," built on "the primacy of art over algorithms." The feather-fabrication numbers are folded into the hair-materials wiki concept as a worked example of fine-fiber puppet dressing at scale.