Case Study: LAIKA achieves high-fidelity, full-color 3D-printed facial animation with Proto3000 (Stratasys J750)

LAIKA - Customer Case Study

LAIKA, the award‑winning stop‑motion animation studio, needed a way to produce tens of thousands of highly detailed, expressive puppet faces without the bottleneck of hand‑painting each piece. To achieve the nuanced, shot‑specific facial performance their films require, LAIKA turned to Proto3000 and the full‑color, multi‑material Stratasys J750 3D printing solution to overcome the limitations of earlier printing workflows.

Proto3000 implemented the Stratasys J750 with advanced voxel/color printing capabilities, enabling repeatable, full‑color, multi‑material prints that eliminated much manual painting and allowed animators to create unique, shot‑by‑shot faces. The result: scalable production that grew from roughly 20,000 faces on Coraline to 64,000 on Kubo and is projected at 85–90,000 for the next film, while dramatically increasing creative flexibility, color fidelity and printing efficiency.

LAIKA

Brian McLean

Director of Rapid Prototype