Laika has spent 20 years building up to Wildwood

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EntertainmentReportFilmLaika has spent 20 years building up to WildwoodHow the stop-motion animation studio blends traditional techniques with modern tech.by Andrew WebsterOct 24, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC

在好莱坞深耕数十载，凯莱布·德斯查内尔（Caleb Deschanel）见多识广。他曾担任《耶稣受难记》和《爱国者》等影片的摄影指导，参与过《教父》和《泰坦尼克号》的拍摄，还执导过几集《双峰》。即便如此，他第一次接触定格动画项目——担任莱卡工作室（Laika）新作《野林》（Wildwood）的摄影指导——时，仍感到准备不足。虽然他知道定格动画是一个漫长而复杂的过程，但电影制作所需的工作量之大还是让他感到惊讶。“刚开始我以为是一回事，很快我就发现完全是另一回事，”德斯查内尔说，“它比我预想的要复杂得多。”

Wildwood has been a long time coming. Laika CEO Travis Knight originally optioned the rights for the book of the same name, written by Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, in 2011. But production didn’t begin until a decade later. “I’ve been working on it in some form or another for 16 years,” Knight, who also directed Wildwood, says. “The reason why I stuck with it, the reason why I had to make this movie no matter what, is because of what it meant to me personally. Underneath it all, it’s a story about love and loss and grief, it’s about the impossible things that love asks of us, and that meant something to me personally in a very profound way.”

《野林》的筹备历时已久。莱卡工作室首席执行官特拉维斯·奈特（Travis Knight）最初于2011年购得了由“十二月党人”乐队主唱科林·梅洛伊（Colin Meloy）所著同名书籍的改编权，但制作直到十年后才开始。“我以各种形式参与这个项目已经16年了，”同时担任《野林》导演的奈特说，“我坚持下去的原因，我必须不惜一切代价制作这部电影的原因，是因为它对我个人意义重大。归根结底，这是一个关于爱、失去和悲伤的故事，它讲述了爱向我们索求的那些不可能之事，这对我个人而言有着极其深远的意义。”

It’s also the biggest production Laika has ever undertaken. Wildwood tells the story of a young girl named Prue who has to venture into the “impassable wilderness” that surrounds Portland in order to find her baby brother. When she enters the forest she discovers a fantasy realm reminiscent of Narnia, with magical spells, talking animals, and warring factions. It required nearly 50 animators and more than 200 puppets to pull it off, and the film is full of ambitious sequences, like a 12-minute battle with dozens of soldiers and a chase scene through a bustling Portland, where Prue’s brother is carried away by a gigantic murder of crows.

这也是莱卡工作室有史以来规模最大的制作。《野林》讲述了一个名叫普鲁（Prue）的年轻女孩为了寻找弟弟，不得不冒险进入波特兰周边“无法逾越的荒野”的故事。当她进入森林时，发现了一个让人联想到纳尼亚的奇幻世界，那里有魔法咒语、会说话的动物和交战的派系。这部电影动用了近50名动画师和200多个木偶，片中充满了雄心勃勃的场景，例如一场有数十名士兵参与的12分钟战斗，以及一场穿过繁华波特兰的追逐戏，在戏中，普鲁的弟弟被一群巨大的乌鸦带走。

According to head of animation Brad Schiff, the studio’s ethos involves mixing “old-school craft with modern technology.” With each project, he says, Laika develops new techniques. If something works well, they then push the idea even further on the next project. For instance, on Laika’s previous film, Missing Link, the main character was outfitted with a diaphragm so that when an animator turned a screw on the puppet’s back, the diaphragm could expand or contract, creating the illusion that it was breathing. This has since become the standard for puppets in Laika’s films.

据动画主管布拉德·希夫（Brad Schiff）介绍，该工作室的理念是将“老派工艺与现代技术”相结合。他说，莱卡在每个项目中都会开发新技术。如果某种方法效果良好，他们就会在下一个项目中进一步推进这一理念。例如，在莱卡之前的电影《遗失的环节》（Missing Link）中，主角被安装了一个横膈膜，当动画师转动木偶背后的螺丝时，横膈膜可以扩张或收缩，从而营造出呼吸的错觉。这已成为莱卡电影中木偶的标准配置。

These may sound like small details, but over the years they add up. For costume designer Deb Cook, there wasn’t a single innovation on Wildwood that stood out to her, but rather the sheer number of tools she had at her disposal. “Over time we’ve gathered together a library of techniques that we’ve been able to put into practice on this movie,” she says. This was especially important on Wildwood, which features a huge range of costumes; in the city sequences everyone is dressed in modern clothing, whereas in the forest characters have more fantastical looks.

这些听起来可能只是微小的细节，但多年来它们积少成多。对于服装设计师黛布·库克（Deb Cook）来说，《野林》中并没有哪一项单一的创新让她印象最深，而是她所能使用的工具数量之多。“随着时间的推移，我们积累了一个技术库，并能将其应用到这部电影中，”她说。这在《野林》中尤为重要，因为片中涉及大量的服装；在城市场景中，每个人都穿着现代服装，而在森林中，角色的造型则更具奇幻色彩。

For Wildwood, many of the advancements came down to materials. The costumes made use of more flexible fabrics, for example, and the team also engineered a new process for creating silicone that’s lighter and more durable than what they previously used. “We’ve done this so we can wean ourselves off of foam latex, which is stinky and it shrinks over time, and five years later it kind of just crumbles,” says Oliver Jones, head of characters and practical effects. “There are advantages to rethinking a lot of these materials that were our go-to probably since King Kong.”

对于《野林》而言，许多进步归功于材料。例如，服装使用了更具柔韧性的面料，团队还设计了一种新的硅胶制作工艺，比他们以前使用的材料更轻、更耐用。“我们这样做是为了摆脱泡沫乳胶，它不仅有异味，而且会随时间收缩，五年后就会碎裂，”角色与特效主管奥利弗·琼斯（Oliver Jones）说，“重新思考许多自《金刚》以来就一直是我们首选的材料，是有其优势的。”

The scale of Wildwood has also forced the studio to adopt another seemingly much more boring practice: being better organized. “They’ve been misplaced,” Cook says, when asked if she’s ever lost a puppet. “There’s now a very sophisticated tracking system because there are so many moving parts, and so many stages around the studio.”

《野林》的规模也迫使工作室采取了另一种看似枯燥得多的做法：提高组织性。“它们确实被弄丢过，”当被问及是否曾丢失过木偶时，库克说，“现在有了一套非常复杂的追踪系统，因为工作室里有太多的活动部件和太多的拍摄场景。”

And while much has been said about the large and elaborate sequences in the film — Knight says the epic battle scene is “probably the most technically challenging thing that we’ve ever done” — all of these techniques are designed to imbue more humanity into characters that are portrayed by puppets. In that regard, small details like the flow of fabric or the impression of breathing are vitally important.

尽管人们对片中宏大而复杂的场景讨论颇多——奈特称那场史诗般的战斗场景“可能是我们做过的技术难度最高的事情”——但所有这些技术的目的都是为了给木偶所扮演的角色注入更多的人性。在这方面，诸如织物的流动或呼吸的印象等微小细节至关重要。

“We also have really subtle and intimate scenes, quiet scenes that don’t have a lot of flash, that have virtually no sound design or music, where the only thing that you’re experiencing is the grief of a father talking about a secret that he’s been holding on to for 15 years, or a quiet moment of a woman grieving the loss of her son,” Knight explains. “These are moments where you have nowhere to hide and the performances of these little puppets — these little assemblages of steel and silicon and fabric that have no life of their own — completely spring to life because of the hand and the artistry of the human behind it. Those are the moments that I’m most proud of.”

“我们还有一些非常微妙和亲密的场景，那些没有太多闪光点、几乎没有音效或音乐的安静场景，你所体验到的只是一个父亲在讲述他保守了15年的秘密时的悲伤，或者一个女人为失去儿子而哀悼的安静时刻，”奈特解释道，“在这些时刻，你无处可藏，而这些小木偶的表演——这些本身没有生命的钢、硅胶和织物的组合体——因为背后人类的手艺和艺术感而完全活了过来。这些才是我最引以为傲的时刻。”