VOD Spotlight: Kubo and the Two Strings
In this 3D-stop motion animated tale, a young boy named Kubo is a storyteller in his seaside town, making his humble living telling stories via folded origami characters. When tragedy strikes, Kubo must set out on a quest with the help of Monkey (voiced by Charlize Theron) and Beetle (voiced by Matthew McConaughey) to solve the mystery of his fallen father in an attempt to fulfill his destiny.
Over the five years it took to bring the project to the screen, Kubo and the Two Strings grew as a love letter to Japanese culture from the entire team of artists, technologists, engineers, and craftspeople. The look of the movie is inspired by classic Japanese art and, in particular, Japanese woodblock printing.
Another key element of Kubo and the Two Strings, “integral to our story and our aesthetic,” notes Chris Butler, who wrote the screenplay for the film, “is origami. In the early scenes, we see Kubo use his magic shamisen instrument to bring sheets of plain paper to life to tell stories about the origin of his family and the brave exploits of his father, Hanzo, the greatest samurai warrior who ever lived.”
Origami, from ori meaning “folding” and kami meaning “paper,” is the Japanese art of paper folding. The art of origami is transforming a flat square sheet of paper into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting techniques. Modern origami practitioners generally discourage the use of cuts, glue, or markings on the paper. The small number of basic origami folds can be combined in a variety of ways to make intricate designs, but the best-known origami model is the Japanese paper crane. The paper’s sides can be different colors, prints, or patterns.
Animator Kevin Parry worked on the bulk of the origami scenes, with Animation Supervisor Brad Schiff charging Parry to make the origami fully functional yet fantastical, beautiful yet believable.
Parry recounts, “The first step in animating the origami was dissecting actual origami. I would research forms and folds similar to those we would be animating and also reference the work Georgina’s team of puppet builders had done. With this information, the next step was to animate a very technical test as a starting point of how the animation performance could ultimately work. For example, if a sheet of paper needed to fold into an animal, I would try to animate the transition as truthful to that origami process as possible. “The test would next get shown to our director, Travis Knight, who would give feedback – and, more importantly, discuss the emotional core of the shot. He would ask to make the origami more elegant, or angrier, or more sinister-looking. He had a very clear idea of how every piece of origami animation would be fitting into the bigger picture. So I in turn would come away with a very clear idea of how and what the animation performance beats should be.” The actual animation of the origami was a very organic process that relied heavily on the support of the props, puppet, and rigging departments. The latter supported Parry through hundreds of sheets of paper that he animated. He notes, “It was up to me to cut the shapes and fold the paper for each and every frame. I would try my best to keep a single sheet of paper working through the whole shot, but I often used replacements — a fold would wear out or begin to fall apart, and I would have to swab in clean paper after a few frames.
“We had a very graphic approach to animating the origami, meaning that the folding only had to make sense from the camera’s point of view. The key was to carry a few large shapes through the animation, so that your eye had something to follow; that allowed us to let a lot of the smaller details magically morph or disappear, and you wouldn’t question what was going on!”
Kubo and the Two Strings is available beginning Nov. 22 on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.
