Wildwood's eagle puppet The General gets articulated wings and a breathing-chest mechanism

Paragraph 1: TheWrap's first-footage report from Annecy 2026 (Drew Taylor, July 1, 2026) describes new mechanical work on LAIKA's Wildwood beyond the puppet-count figures already tracked from earlier coverage: The General, the film's golden-eagle character, has fully articulated wings that open and collapse like a real bird's, and a built-in mechanism that raises and lowers the puppet's chest to simulate breathing. The piece also notes that Wildwood's animators, per LAIKA's usual practice, animate everything in a shot -- not just the character but every other element and character sharing the frame -- and that cinematographer Caleb Deschanel is involved in a production with a 16-year path from rights acquisition to release.

Paragraph 2: For SMDB, the durable fact worth keeping past this article's shelf life is the breathing-chest mechanism and articulated wings themselves -- a concrete, sourced example of mechanical puppetry extending from facial control (already documented for Corpse Bride) to full-body practical effects. That has been folded into the mechanical-puppet wiki concept with wildwood added as a related work; this row keeps the citation so the fact survives if the original article link-rots. Puppet/set totals (231 puppets, 136 sets) and the Annecy footage reveal itself are already covered by earlier entries (laika-wildwood-production-variety-2025; industry-sweep-2026-07-01) and are not repeated here.