The Portland Art Museum exhibit "Animating Life: The Art, Science, and Wonder of Laika" will give visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the Hillsboro film studio's four Oscar-nominated movies. It runs Oct. 14 through May 20. (Amy Wang/Staff)

By Amy Wang | The Oregonian/OregonLive

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Laika puppets Other Mother and Coraline, from the film "Coraline." (Amy Wang/Staff)

The movie stars in the Portland Art Museum’s Kridel Grand Ballroom stand perfectly still, poised on dark oval platforms. It’s funny to see them looking so stiff, given their fluid performances in their Oscar-nominated films.

Then again, they are made of metal and silicon.

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Laika puppet Norman, from the ghost movie "ParaNorman." (Amy Wang/Staff)

Their names are Coraline, Norman, Eggs and Kubo, and they're the puppet children at the heart of the films "Coraline," "ParaNorman," "The Boxtrolls" and "Kubo and the Two Strings," all painstakingly handcrafted by Laika, a stop-motion animation film studio in Hillsboro, over the past decade. They're at the museum this August evening for a reception and panel discussion intended to excite museum donors about the exhibit "Animating Life: The Art, Science, and Wonder of Laika," which runs Oct. 14 through May 20. From the ballroom stage, nearly a dozen Laika department heads share behind-the-scenes stories, gush about how Portland welcomes "creatives," and revel in the artistic freedom they enjoy. "ParaNorman" director Chris Butler calls Laika "a magical workshop."

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The house from the Laika film "Coraline" will be among the sets featured in the Portland Art Museum's "Animating Life" exhibit about film studio Laika. (Kelvin Jones)

“Animating Life” is meant to spread that sense of magic to the public in a roughly 7,000-square-foot exhibit that will sprawl throughout the museum’s ground floor. As visitors walk into the building, they’ll be able to ogle the house from “Coraline.” Upon entering the exhibit proper, they’ll find the 16-foot skeleton from “Kubo” looming over them. Behind the skeleton are several of Laika’s most elaborate sets.

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Kodi Smit-McPhee, who supplied the voice of Norman in "ParaNorman," comes face to face with his character while visiting the set. (Reed Harkness)

Then there’s the Wall of Faces, which showcases the rapid-prototype face replacement printing that won Laika a 2016 scientific and engineering Oscar. The technology has been used to create thousands of facial expressions for the studio’s puppets.

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The Laika puppet Eggs, from the film "The Boxtrolls." (Amy Wang/Staff)

Amid the show-stoppers will be hundreds of Laika artifacts: original sketches, small models called maquettes, storyboards outlining animation sequences, puppets and costumes. Visitors can study a timeline of the history of stop-motion animation, a technique that uses a series of pictures of objects to create the illusion of movement. Laika artists will make appearances and lead workshops. And, of course, the museum will screen Laika’s four films, all nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Here's a refresher on the Laika films featured in a Portland Art Museum exhibit

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Laika’s chief financial officer and head of business operations, Brad Wald, doesn’t mince words about the exhibit’s mission. “Brand building,” he says. “Our mission is to turn Laika into a household name, representing the quality films and products that it has.”

It might seem a belated mission, more than a decade after Laika’s founding. But Laika is notorious for having kept a low profile in its hometown. That hasn’t been the case in California, where Laika has staged several exhibits similar to “Animating Life”: one at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, one at the San Diego Comic-Con entertainment convention, and a “Kubo” exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Wald says those exhibits were significantly smaller and, in the case of Comic-Con and the Japanese American museum, aimed squarely at fans. “This will be a much deeper dive into the artistry, the history, the technology, the artistry, that will connect well with museumgoers,” Wald says.

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The enchanted garden from the Laika film "Coraline" will be featured in the Portland Art Museum's "Animating Life" exhibit about film studio Laika. (Galvin Collins)

The artistry in particular is why “it makes perfect sense” for an art museum to host an exhibit about a film studio, says Brian Ferriso, director of the Portland Art Museum. Laika is essentially an art company that uses film as a medium, he says. “You walk into (the studio) and you’ve entered in perhaps one of the most exciting creative ventures happening, in multiple artists intensely focusing on this craft.”

Ferriso also can’t resist showcasing a local company. “I’ve always talked about this idea of being of the community rather than in it,” he says. “I’m always looking to find multiple avenues to express our ‘of-ness.’ And this is one of them. … The Oregon-ness of this is very important.”

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At the world premiere of Laika's film "Coraline," actress Teri Hatcher, who voiced the character Other Mother, is flanked by Phil Knight (left) and his son Travis Knight, president of Laika. (Fredrick D. Joe/2009)

He recalls when “Coraline” premiered at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland in 2009. “I was still sort of new” – he’d become the museum’s director three years earlier, arriving from the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma – “and I was trying to understand Oregon, and I’m like, what is this? What is this art form that’s so much part of this community?”

That question forms the spine of the “Animating Life” exhibit, which will examine Laika’s films from multiple perspectives: artistically, technologically and historically.

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The studio doesn’t hesitate to present itself as a haven for artists. In a promotional video played at the August museum event, Laika employees invoked the words “art” and “artist” repeatedly: “With each successive film, we all work and grow as artists. … We’re a group of really talented artists who want to do it the best that we can. … It feels like we really are just scratching the surface of what this art form can do.”

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The "Coraline" garden set in the Laika studio. (Galvin Collins)

Rose Bond, a Portland animator who leads the Animated Arts program at Pacific Northwest College of Art, served as the curatorial adviser to “Animating Life.” She, too, has no problem classifying what Laika does as art.

“Laika is trying to break and push against formula and I think that’s what artists do,” she says. During a visit to the studio, she was impressed not only by “the love, the care, the imagination” poured into details such as the motif on a foot-high puppet’s kimono, but also by the ingenuity brought to problem-solving, such as using popcorn to represent tree blossoms. “There’s no pattern for what they do,” she says.

That mindset is a good fit for Portland, she adds. “They as a company, they reinforce our Portland persona in terms of, we’re going to do stuff a little differently and take it to another level.”

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The ballroom set from the Laika film "The Boxtrolls," seen during installation for the Portland Art Museum exhibit "Animating Life." (Steven Wong Jr.)

Some visitors to “Animating Life” are sure to arrive not realizing that Laika is doing things differently. “People have come through our exhibitions thinking that our films were just CG,” says Wald, referring to computer graphics. “These were fans. And they’ve come through realizing that there’s so much more to it and they’re bigger fans now.”

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The school hallway from "ParaNorman" - that's Norman Babcock at his locker - is among the sets that will be featured in the Portland Art Museum's "Animating Life" exhibit about film studio Laika. (Courtesy of Laika)

Butler, the “ParaNorman” director, said at the August panel discussion that stop-motion animation, even when blended with computer graphics and visual effects as at Laika, makes a big impression because “you can tell it’s being handmade.”

“The CG animation companies spend billions of dollars over the years trying to emulate real life,” Butler said. “By ‘real life’ what I mean is, all the imperfections of real life come with something that is handmade. And that is an incredibly difficult thing to emulate digitally. It’s really difficult. Real light on real objects is what makes our movies unique.”

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Laika puppet Kubo, from the film "Kubo and the Two Strings." (Amy Wang/Staff)

And it’s those objects that form the heart of “Animating Life.” One Laika puppet, regardless of its role in a film, can claim as many as 60 designers and creators. At the Universal exhibit, a video clip showed the care lavished on creating a miniature glass lamp that went into the background of a crowded set.

“Anybody who’s questioning why these films exist in this manner, I think this is the greatest opportunity to walk through the halls and to experience firsthand that tactile relationship we have with the medium … and I don’t think you’ll be asking that question much longer,” said Butler’s fellow panelist Ollie Jones, Laika’s animation rigging supervisor.

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The giant skeleton from the Laika film "Kubo and the Two Strings" is installed at the Portland Art Museum as part of the exhibit "Animating Life." (Steven Wong Jr.)

Laika’s style doesn’t come cheap. At the museum’s August event, Ferriso rolled out a “Laika Circle” donor incentive: For a gift of $10,000, Laika will host an animation workshop at a school of the donor’s choice and give a backstage tour. “We’re taking on about $300, $350,000 of the fundraising” for the exhibit, Ferriso says. Wald declines to specify Laika’s contribution beyond saying, “They’re investing, we’re investing … we’ve contributed in many equal ways with different talents and of course financially.”

Both sides anticipate a hit. Ferriso says that when the museum’s board of directors learned of the exhibit, one member made a “major donation” on the spot.

Wald says, “We know already from following social media that our fans are flying in from other places. They’re buying tickets in advance.”

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Those fans will have a golden opportunity not only to see Laika’s work but also to place it in historical context, Bond says. The museum’s Northwest Film Center will screen other stop-motion works, such as German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger’s “The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” released in 1926.

With this exhibit, Laika is finally trumpeting its connection to Portland. Its roots here actually go back to the 1970s, to its original incarnation as Will Vinton Studios, which gets a nod in the exhibit’s timeline, Wald says. But Vinton, who won the first Oscar for stop-motion animation and went on to create the singing California Raisins, had a messy falling-out in the early 2000s with his biggest investor, Nike founder Phil Knight, whose son Travis now runs Laika. Since then, the studio has stayed at the edge of the local limelight, hunkering down in a nondescript corporate park off the Sunset Highway in Hillsboro.

This exhibit will change that, Bond says. “Laika’s stepping out of that big anonymous warehouse and coming to be with us.”

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A set from the Laika film "The Boxtrolls" is installed in the Portland Art Museum exhibit "Animating Life." (Steven Wong Jr.)

"ANIMATING LIFE"

When: Oct. 14-May 20 (except Thanksgiving and Christmas)

Where: Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.

Admission: $20 for adults, $17 for college students and seniors ages 62 and older, free for kids 17 and younger and for active-duty military; free on First Thursdays from 5 to 8 p.m.; $5 after 5 p.m. Fridays; $5 Arts For All.

Information: portlandartmuseum.org or 503-226-2811

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MORE LAIKA COVERAGE

Laika seeks to raise its Portland profile, build a brand with museum showcase

Laika's history -- Will Vinton to 'Kubo'