My research topic is on the movie “Coraline”. "Coraline" is a 2009 American 3D stop-motion horror film, written and directed by Henry Selick of Laika and distributed by Focus Features. According to Selick, this classic film took 20 months to shoot, not including the time spent on pre-production and post-production work. The total time it took to complete this film was approximately 4 years. The film was based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel "Coraline," which is about a girl named Coraline who moves to a new house, in which she finds a secret door that leads to an alternate universe that closely resembles her own. The plot of this film is very unique, so Selick believed that if this film was shot in live-action, as was originally planned, it would not do this film justice. Sources1 cite that Selick thought the film would look too "fake" if shot in live-action; for example, the scenes where the black cat was talking or the scene where there were over 500 Scottish terriers sitting in a theater. He also believed that since the film was meant to be aimed at a younger audience, live action would make this film too scary for children to witness. Therefore, stop-motion animation was used to create this film. Stop-motion animation is a technique that involves animating physical objects, making these objects appear to move on their own. This is done by taking many still photos of static objects and putting them together, thus creating the illusion of these objects in motion. Stop-motion has very distant origins. The creation of stop-motion can be attributed to J. Stuart Blackton. The first film to incorporate the use of stop-motion was 1898's “The Humpty Dumpty Circus,” but the technique became more popular after the release of films such as “King Kong” (1933) and “Mighty Joe Young” (1949) ). to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Over time, stop-motion animation has evolved. Traditional stop-motion animation has been combined with computer-generated imagery (CGI) and 3D printing technology to create 3D stop-motion. Laika was the first animation house to do this, so this is a form of stop-motion used to create “Coraline.” Another form of animation used in this film is replacement animation. Replacement animation is just like regular stop-motion animation; the only difference is that instead of using one object or "puppet", many different faces with different expressions are printed for each character. In the context of this film, each replacement head was sculpted digitally and then printed using a 3D printer. 3D printing uses a UV-sensitive resin and support material that is sprayed in a layering process that builds objects in 3D space. This is how each character's facial expressions were made so lifelike, which is truly amazing since such naturalistic performances can be created using inanimate objects. Quoting Brian McLean, director of rapid prototype at Laika, "Henry [Selick] really wanted [the character] Coraline to be able to be very subtle at times but also have broad expressions," 2 At the time, no other special effects technique allowed this happens. So, this is another reason why stop-motion animation was used to create this film. Sources say that 6,333 heads were printed for Coraline alone, and that up to 20,000 heads were printed for each character in the film. This was done by layering liquid glue into white powder. These heads were then painted and sanded by hand. When combined, these heads, 45(4), 787-805.