Missing Link | Hidden Worlds: The Films of LAIKA

The DESIGN

Set in the Victorian era (mid- to late-1800s), Missing Link reflects that time’s rich color palette and love of vibrant, intricate designs.

Pattern and Color

Most people think of the Victorian era through its reproductions in sepia-toned photographs or ink drawings, however it had a colorful and highly patterned aesthetic period influenced by the many innovations of the time
The production design reflects this effusive use of color and pattern and sense of Victorian modernity
The film heightens this unique, almost exaggerated color palette—apart from the somewhat neutral Optimates Club, which is stuck in its simple, dualistic world view
National Geographic Magazine is another influence on the film’s design. The magazine (est. 1888) introduced its readers to new cultures and grand adventures through photographs and stories.
Inspired by Victorian-era patterns, the production design team repeated similar motifs throughout the film, even unexpected places like roof tiling and tree leaves!

Adelina Costume Detail, Missing Link, 2019.

The Rule of Thirds

Missing Link’s highly stylized design of characters and objects is influenced by the rule of thirds. It’s not actually a rule, but a guideline for composing images based on the idea of putting important parts of the image 1/3 or 2/3 away from the sides (or top and bottom).

For example, Sir Lionel’s legs are two thirds of his frame
The Loch Ness Monster’s eyes are in the top third of her face
This rule creates consistency across the continents and cultures Sir Lionel and Link visit, and produces a cohesive look to the film

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

Behind the Scenes, Missing Link, 2019.

The Puppets

Missing Link employed several new digital effects, but also expanded the development of physical puppet technologies.

Stop-motion puppets are typically built between 1/5 to 1/6 the size of their human counterparts; this allows the internal structures to be strong enough to withstand a two-year film shoot while the outer details are large enough to stand up to the scrutiny of a cinematic camera and projector
Each puppet utilized an individually created “jetpack”—a remote turnbuckle device fitted to the hips and the small of the back, allowing for small, incremental movement by the animators
Miniature 3” tall (or smaller) replicas of the three heroes and a villain were built to allow for the animators to achieve an extremely wide shot in the Himalayas
Both the Elephant and the Horse were constructed using a “bodysuit” technique in which muscles are first carved from foam, rubber, and plastic and attached to the internal skeleton; a thin outer skin of silicon is stretched over the entire body and detailed to give the illusion of hair
Sir Lionel’s Horse utilizes a custom-created, semi-circular rig which transfers the central pivot point of the horse to the outside of the puppet. This allowed the animator to capture the look of weight-transfer unique to a horse’s gait.
Not only did LAIKA build the largest hero puppet for this film, they also built and animated the smallest
The Missing Link puppets are all built approximately 20% smaller than puppets from previous LAIKA films, allowing the sets to be smaller and Mr. Link, the largest character in the film, an animator-friendly size of 16” tall

Behind the Scenes, Missing Link, 2019.

The Creatures

Missing Link employed several new digital effects, but also expanded the development of physical puppet technologies.

The Elephant

Animating the elephant, with its complex rolling gait, called for new puppet and rigging technologies.

The Design

The elephant is the first puppet to be constructed with stretchy skin which adhered only in certain areas to movable carbon fiber body panels
It weighs approximately 36 pounds
A specialty stunt foot was created with open cavities to create the illusion of weight and compressed flesh
The foot features 100% independently sympathetic toenails
Only one elephant puppet was created for the film

The Movement

The neck uses a rack and pinion system, which translates circular motion into linear motion, to lift the head
A gas-powered spring assists in lifting the hips
The howdah, or saddle, which carries Sir Lionel and Adelina, is on a two-axis motorized rig to provide the illusion of bounce in the elephant’s walk
Extensive use was made of a controller and animation tracker software, newly developed for Missing Link, to remotely move elements when filming the elephant.
The controller uses a series of knobs which are linked to encoders on motors
The software provides a visual graph, mapping of the position of the Elephant, and allowed the animator to compare each position to prior frames

The Shoot

The shot of the elephant walking required a 35-foot-long path and a motorized crane over 14’ tall with a reach of 12’ to support the puppets
The wraparound nature of the camera motion meant that one side of the set had to be shot first and then struck; then the other side of the set was installed and shot
It took almost three months to shoot the 20-second sequence

Mr. Link

Link is the heaviest lead character ever created for a LAIKA film to date, and one of the most complicated.

The Fur

His general body mass was created by building up pieces of perforated foam latex onto a metal armature, like muscles on bones
Then, like a skin or a fur suit, sheets of molded silicone with the fur texture were applied over the body shape
Due to the extreme amount of mobility, squash, and stretch needed in Mr. Link's neck, individual cast urethane "fur petals" were attached in layers like the way feathers lay on a bird’s neck
When Link twists and bends, these layers slide over and past one another rather than buckle and fold as a single sheet of molded silicone would

The Pants

The shot of Mr. Link pulling up his pants while jumping was achieved by swapping whole puppets between frames to achieve zipper closure
The pants' splitting shot was achieved with a specialty-built rig to support a 300% scale Mr. Link rear end
On the splitting pants, winders provided tension to pull the fabric seam apart and push out the tuft of hair

Mr. Link’s Mouth

The shot of the inside of Mr. Link’s mouth utilized six incremental driver paddles to manipulate the tongue, winders to pull open the skin of the cheeks, and another set of winders to allow for opening and closing of the jaw
The entire mouth is constructed at 500% scale with 3D-printed teeth and gums

Armature Test Video, Missing Link, 2019.

Behind the scenes, Missing Link, 2019.

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

Breathing Life

Mr. Link was affectionately described by the LAIKA team as a “Hairy Avocado,” loveable and cuddly on the outside. On the inside, he is a nest of metal parts that includes a mechanical belly mover, a chest breather, squash-and-stretch devices, worm gears, and racks and pinions. His “fur petals” were attached in layers, much the way feathers lie on a bird’s neck, to facilitate life-like squashing and stretching. All the puppets for Missing Link were built approximately 20% smaller than the puppets of previous LAIKA films. This scale difference allowed sets to be smaller and kept Mr. Link, the largest character in the film, at an animator-friendly size of 16” tall.

Concept Art, Missing Link, 2019.

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

The PROPS

Even though the props are miniature, many are made the same way as the full-size versions.

The reins, bridle and saddle on the horse are made from real leather that had been thinned down dramatically to achieve the required scale
Many of the books in Lionel’s study are leather bound using authentic bookbinding techniques
The bagpipes were made with a specially built latex balloon which was inflated and deflated through syringes
The (exterior) train was the largest prop built for Missing Link

The VEHICLES

The Stagecoach

A seemingly simple scene required an enormous number of moving parts.

Inside the stagecoach, each of the 180 hanging tassels are individually rigged and motion-controlled
Rumble seats were constructed to provide 6-axies of movement per puppet
The seats, curtains, and movement of the carriage utilize a total of 40 individual remotely controlled programmable motors

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

The Train

Although it is a prop, the train ran on rails just like a real one.

Multiple trains were built for the film: one to show it from the outside, others to show it from the inside.
The exterior version of the train is a working train pulled by a motorized winch along rails
Since it ran too smoothly along the rails, bits of tape painted to look like rust were added to the track so that the wheels would bump along for more authentic motion
Because the characters are seen walking down the center aisle of the train, the set does not have a floor in the Pullman car. Instead, the entire set is suspended and moved on rails for animator access.

The Ship

When a prop is too big to move, everything else must move around it.

The ship is too big and heavy to move, so the camera and all the surrounding lighting were motorized to move around the ship to create the illusion of motion
To capture animation inside a long, narrow corridor, LAIKA built the smallest camera it has ever used. This camera was mounted on a long pole and sent down the corridor.

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

3D Printed Faces, Missing Link, 2019.

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

The Technology and the craft

3D Printing

LAIKA is considered a leader in the use of Rapid Prototyping (RP or 3D printing) for facial animation and was awarded a Scientific and Engineering Oscar® plaque in 2016 for its innovation in the field

Nearly a year before filming began on Missing Link, LAIKA tested a brand new, as yet unreleased, color 3D printing technology called the J750 printer, made by Stratasys
Although LAIKA had been using Stratasys 3D color printers since its second feature, ParaNorman, this new technology from Stratasys is revolutionary, allowing for unprecedented accuracy and detail
In order to precisely control each 3D pixel (voxel) LAIKA partnered with Fraunhofer, a German research facility in their development of advanced 3D slicing software, called Cuttlefish
Missing Link is LAIKA’s first film to use full-color resin 3D printed replacement faces on all the puppets. LAIKA now had the technology to print 360,000 different color combinations.

Faces

Missing Link is LAIKA’s first film to 3D print custom animated facial performances for every character in every shot of the film

Past films relied on “face kits” with interchangeable facial expressions that were re-used throughout the film
Five 3D printers often ran 24 hours a day churning out approximately 2,000 faces per week
About 75% of the faces created for the film were for the three main characters
The silicone fur surrounding Mr. Link’s face was animated through replacement animation
By removing and replacing a 3D printed “ring,” the fur would change shape
Each 3D printed ring was designed to make sure the fur properly matched the shape of all his 3D printed faces
Due to the improved surface detail of Stratasys’ J750 3D printer, almost 90% of the faces printed for Missing Link did not require sanding
After printing, support material was removed, magnets were installed, and the faces were sprayed with multiple layers of a clear and dull coat for a smooth finish
The Rapid Prototype Department printed over 106,000 faces for the film including:
- 39,000 (37%) Lionel faces
- 27,000 (26%) Link/Susan faces
- 13,000 (12%) Adelina faces

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

Behind the Scenes, Missing Link, 2019.

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

Behind the Scenes, Missing Link, 2019.

Visual Effects

Computer-generated (CG) effects are used to enhance and extend traditional stop-motion filming techniques. Missing Link used more CG effects, assets, and characters than any LAIKA film before.

Of the 1486 shots in Missing Link, 465 shots required CG set extensions, 460 required CG special effects, and 325 required CG animation
The VFX Asset team created 531 CG assets and 182 CG characters for Missing Link, both the most of any LAIKA film. By comparison, for Kubo and the Two Strings, 249 CG assets and 77 CG characters were created.
There were over 1,000 rigs (equipment that holds puppets and other objects) removed from shots by the VFX Paint team.
On average, shots with water used over 100 practical and CG elements to produce the final image
The opening shot in Loch Ness had more than 400 elements in the final composition
Each underwater Loch Ness plankton simulation had more than two million particles
One simulation for the stormy ocean water splash contained the maximum number of voxels (3D pixels) that Katana, the lighting software, could handle—three billion
The VFX Department used over a petabyte of storage—that’s a million gigabytes—in the creation of Missing Link
Missing Link took 112 million processor hours—12,785 YEARS—to render the entire movie
The CG ice bridge model is composed of 37,000 parts, 20,000,000 polygons, and takes 4.7GB of memory when fully loaded

Hybrid Filmmaking

LAIKA pioneered the use of CGI (Computer- Generated Imagery) to expand the visual scope of stop- motion beyond the animation stage. This enabled them to do things not typically found in stop-motion, like creating large crowds, big effects, or wide vistas. Of the 1,486 shots in Missing Link, 465 shots required CG set extensions, 460 required CG special effects, and 325 required CG animation.

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.

On Set, Missing Link, 2019.

The SETS

Missing Link called for some of the largest sets built for a LAIKA film.

A multitude of custom-made and unconventional materials were used in creating the landscapes in the film, such as silk-screened and laser cut craft paper, textured fabrics, plastic beads, tissue paper, miniature railroad materials, goat hair, foam balls and blacklight paint
For the ice bridge, there were 64 individually rigged ice blocks which could be independently controlled for the shot in which the bridge begins to break
Two different icicles were used to achieve the cracking effect; a plastic resin version and a silicone version that was photographed separately to recreate the look of cracking ice
In the ice pit, there is a shot in which Mr. Link’s face is reflected in multiple facets of an ice wall; to achieve this, an array of 10 cameras was set up to simultaneously capture each individual reflection at a different angle
The Logging Town was so large that a combination of miniature and full-scale sets was combined to achieve the distance of the town viewed from afar
The shooting of the full Logging Town set required closing an aisle within the studio and placing the camera rig across the walkway
At peak production, there were 91 units in production—about 50% more than any other LAIKA film
There are 1486 shots in the film - the most of any LAIKA movie up to that point

World Building

The globe-trotting adventure Missing Link had 1,486 individual shots, the most of any LAIKA feature to that point. The most basic building block of filmmaking, a shot refers to the space the audience sees inside a single film frame. The film broke many records for the studio, with more than 110 sets and 65 unique locations, more than in any previous LAIKA production. Many custom-made and unconventional materials were used to create the film’s landscapes, such as silk-screened and laser-cut craft paper, textured fabrics, plastic beads, tissue paper, miniature railroad materials, goat hair, foam balls, and blacklight paint.

Film Still, Missing Link, 2019.