This article was taken from the September 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

These days, animated movies are nearly all digital. We're not complaining -- when we're being dazzled by the latest CG masterpiece, we don't miss hand-drawn cells, Claymation or stop-motion. But then we saw

ParaNorman and realised what we'd been missing.


The darkly comic story follows a boy trying to save his home town from a centuries-old curse (screenwriter and codirector Chris Butler describes the film as "John Carpenter meets John Hughes"). Like Aardman Animation's The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists (Wired 04.12), ParaNorman uses a 3D printer to create its puppets' faces.

It's also the first feature from Laika Entertainment since its Oscar-nominated 2009 hit Coraline. With tens of thousands of printed parts and millions of hours of work, the project represents unparalleled innovation in hand-crafted storytelling -- and a new, revitalised future for a 100-year-old art form.