How 20 years of LAIKA production R&D converged on Wildwood

Andrew Webster's October 24 release-week feature for The Verge asks how LAIKA's accumulated production methods made Wildwood possible. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, working on his first stop-motion feature, says the process proved much more complicated than he expected. Head of animation Brad Schiff describes the studio's approach as combining old-school craft with modern technology, with each production carrying successful tools into the next one.

One example is breathing. Missing Link's main puppet was built with a diaphragm that an animator could expand or contract by turning a screw in its back. Schiff says that mechanism has since become standard on LAIKA puppets. Costume designer Deborah Cook makes the same point at department scale: no single Wildwood invention dominates; the production draws on a library of techniques assembled over earlier films. More flexible fabrics widened the costume department's choices, while the character department developed a new silicone process that Oliver Jones, head of characters and practical effects, describes as lighter and more durable than the foam latex it is intended to replace. Jones notes that foam latex smells, shrinks and can crumble after several years.

Scale also changed production control. The film used nearly 50 animators and more than 200 puppets, including a 12-minute battle, so Cook says LAIKA now relies on a sophisticated tracking system to keep puppets and other moving parts located across its stages. The article does not describe the software or tagging method, so SMDB records the practice without guessing at the implementation. Knight's emphasis is that these systems serve performance: fabric movement, breathing and other small physical details have to carry quiet scenes of grief as convincingly as the large action sequences. This is a separate cross-department interview rather than a re-announcement of the film's release or the costume-department story published the previous day.