Kubo and the Two Strings
Kubo and the Two Strings won a BAFTA Award, and the 2016 Scientific & Technical Oscar® for the fully realized rapid prototyping process I spearheaded and evolved over the course of ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls.
Art Direction and Color Design
For Kubo, I provided art direction and color design for several of the film’s central characters: Moon Beast, Monkey and Beetle. This included modeling scale displacement maps for body parts; diffusing maps for color and translucency; cross-collaboration with fabricators on color effects; work with other departments on visual effects (UV painting), and; detailed /stable hair design for character animals through animated poses. To achieve the right effect and movement on Monkey and Beetle, I introduced a fourth color variation through material thinness in the characters’ hair and internal core color, allowing the core to appear between layers of hair strands.
Client: Laika / Kubo Objective: (R) Match digital paint and print to Maquette by Josh Storey (L)
Surface design
3D Printing Innovation
The creation of Moon Beast also marked another contribution to 3D printing innovation at LAIKA. I partnered with 3D printing company Stratasys on testing for the Connex3, which resulted in a powerful breakthrough of color plastic printing of singular indexed colors only. This progressed into establishing expectations through exploring how the colors would perform against material translucencies, UV highlighting, stage lighting, color variety, back painting, shadow results and model manipulation for all three primary characters. Using Stratasys’ hardware, we co-developed software specific to LAIKA’s needs through an independent contractor and were able to unlock and print with Voxel capabilities. The end result was a formatted texture index system, and the availability of diverse model appearances and material possibilities.
