The Art of Animating Kubo's Epic Opening Scene

[Narrator] Pay careful attention to everything

you see, and hear.

No matter how unusual it may seem.

(wondrous orchestra music)

We wanted to throw the audience into the film, at first,

with our cold open so we wanted to give a sense

of mystery, and, you know, some thrills,

as well as giving a sense of the epic scope

and scale of the movie.

They are assemblages of steel and silicon

on a hard surface.

It has to look like flesh and bone and cloth

on a soft, sandy surface.

(baby crying)

We cut a trough into the set,

where we put a piece of rigging that goes under the set

and into the mother's stomach.

It's a little creepy, I know.

But it allows us to slide her along the surface of the sand,

and then, every time she reaches out and claws

into the sand, that's all a plasticine or a clay surface

that we have to carve into a move a frame at a time.

We'd have little bits of sand that were flying up

in the air, so we take these little bits of foam,

or clay, we put them on bug pins or wires,

or little bits of fishing line, and we have those elevated,

and move them a frame at a time to make it look like

it's bursting out of the ground.

[Narrator] His name is Kubo.

His grandfather stole something from him.

As pretty much everybody knows,

animating water is incredibly challenging.

It does not come easy,

and stop motion and water,

particularly do not go well together.

(orchestra music)

We have the mother puppet,

who is dressed to look like she's, you know,

coated in rain,

and she has this big ponytail.

It was attached to the base of the mom's skull

with a gooseneck armature, which is, essentially,

what you find on a table lamp.

Those things where you're moving a table lamp around.

That thing was threaded through the hair,

and then backed into the mother's skull,

and the animator could then move that a frame at a time,

to make it look like the hair was flying around

in the wind,

and it's effectively a bunch of black silicon spaghetti

that looks kind of like hair.

(majestic orchestra music)

(thunder)

When she lifts her hand up in the air,

and we see these little wispy bits of magic,

the little wispy bits of magic,

that's all done digitally.

We do a bunch of art explorations in our art department,

where we design these things graphically,

and in 2D, and so, when we take all

these different elements,

the practical puppet, the practical set of the shore,

the boat, that's something that we shot,

that's attached to a rig, that moves a frame at a time,

to make it look like it's carving

through these violent waves,

and the digital water that is made to look

like practical water, and then,

we do a number of different simulations,

to make sure that that feels and falls naturally,

like you would expect it to in nature,

and we bring all those things together,

in compositing, and hopefully, when you see them,

it looks like it's shot in one place,

in one moment with a unified graphic sensibility.

(intriguing orchestra music)