Case Study: LAIKA achieves shot-by-shot, fully customized facial animation with Stratasys J750 Voxel Print

LAIKA revolutionizes filmmaking with the help of Stratasys 3D printing

LAIKA, the award-winning stop-motion animation studio behind films like Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings, needed a way to produce thousands of highly detailed, fully colored replacement faces without the time-consuming hand-painting that limited creative options. To meet this challenge they partnered with Stratasys, first beta-testing the Objet Connex3 and later adopting the full‑color, multi‑material Stratasys J750 with Voxel Print and custom software integrations.

Stratasys supplied the color multi‑material printers and worked with LAIKA and software partners to unlock voxel‑level color and texture control, enabling shot‑by‑shot, fully customized facial prints that animators can produce, process and deliver to set. The result was a dramatic scale-up in production capability—face counts rose from roughly 20,000 (Coraline) to 64,000 (Kubo) and are projected at 85–90,000 for the next film—while giving LAIKA repeatable, accurate full‑color output and a workflow that directly expanded its creative and performance possibilities with Stratasys.

LAIKA

Brian McLean

Director of Rapid Prototype