Coraline:
Firstly I should mention their first feature that almost everyone is familiar with: Coralline. Coralline is a 2009 American stop-motion animated film based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel of the same name. It was produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. The story caught a lot of people’s attention because it was rather dark and in common opinion not suited for children. In my opinion that’s a big misconception, because one of the biggest flaws in animation movies, especially in modern days, is the assumption that children can’t handle a bit more darker source material and that they must be babied and everything around is simplified forcing them into an environment that does not challenge thoughts or ideas what so ever.
Not to mention that Coralline had an interesting moral which you don’t often see in movies, especially the ones which are intended for children. The moral of the movie, arguably was about home and what makes one. The world Coralline was living in was noticeably gray and dull. All the background colors were dim, cold and made the surrounding seem bland and boring. But the people had color. They gave the world meaning, purpose, they make it interesting and unique. Meanwhile the other world was flashy, color full and exciting but the inhabitants were nothing but plastic puppets puled by the Other Mother, making the world seem color full and nice meanwhile all of its foundations were built on sand.
Keeping on track its worth repeating that Coralline had amazing animation without a doubt.
Furthermore keeping track on what Sarah has told us about Title sequences in our lectures and examples she has shown us I posted The Opening credit sequence of Coralline bellow.
ParaNorman:
Paranorman is probably my favorite animated movie so far. Just everything in it clicks for me, but the main thing that I admired this movie for is the fact that indeed it did not have a real villain or anything of sorts. The whole movie had gray morality dominating every character, which is incredibly rare to find in movies, and even more so in movies intended for children. I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with the concept of Gray Morality, but just for the sake of clarification: In an all-grey conflict, neither side is totally good or completely evil. Both sides have a strong, justifiable reason for fighting, and contain a mixture of people of all kinds, from admirable, upstanding individuals to vicious, slimy scumbags.
In Paranorman the only true “antagonist” (for the lack of a better term) is fear, ignorance and anger. Both of these are very real emotions everyone experiences and the movies overall message is, arguably, relatable to any type of audience that will be put in front of the movie. Obviously this is not the only reasons why I prefer this movie over the rest, there are many little factors that come to play in that, but watching Paranorman just lights that little flame inside of me that restarts the drive to be a part of something like this, because, and at a risk of repeating myself, this feels like somebody’s work of heart, and watching it is already a unique experience, but I imagine that being a part of a project like this should be an indescribable joy.
Bellow I also posted the production and the making of the movie, in my opinion, this is something that is a must see to fully appreciate this movie or at least to understand how much work and hours came into making this movie.
Boxtrolls:
The third movie Laika’s animation studio released is box
trolls. This is another movie which was very unique and imaginative, which
again had a dominating gray morality, although it wasn’t as close to the core
as the one in Paranorman, but it was still something that doesn’t take too long
to find relatable. The message of the movie, yet again, could be considered rather
niche, because it more or less, off course everyone is entitled to their own
opinion, seems to translate to: A family is more than just blood. Which is a
whole new outlook on the evil step parent situation we usually see in animated
movies. Its pointless to bring up how inspiring and amazing I find the
animation in this movie to be, not to mention the plot and witty dialogue plus
the world building etc. because I do believe I repeated myself long enough
regarding the inspirational aspects I see in this studios work and in the
animated movies they produce.
For a point of reference or additional information this is the studios website: Here
