Discover the magic behind stop-motion animation at BFI’s LAIKA Exhibition

A new BFI exhibition on the Southbank offers a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the more popular stop-motion animated movies of recent years were made.

Opening to coincide with the BFI’s season on animated movies, this exhibition focuses on work by the USA-based animators LAIKA and their films, including Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Strings.

If you’re a fan of the movies, you’re probably already wondering how to book tickets, but the exhibition will appeal to anyone interested in animation and the movie-making process in general. Opening with a human-scale walkthrough forest from the LAIKA classic Coraline, the rest of the exhibition is divided into sections based on each of the movies and focuses on a different aspect of animation work in general.

So you might be looking at how figures are created, then animated, then stage sets built, and even moving railway carriages with sides that pull out to allow the animator to move the passengers.

It’s not a film series I am personally familiar with, although the exhibition has now got me thinking about visiting the BFI to watch them — and anyone who is a fan of Tim Burton’s films will absolutely love the surreal worlds they’ve created here.

Over 700 objects are on display, although some of them are very small, so they don’t take up a vast amount of space. There’s even more in the draws underneath some of the displays, which you can open to see inside.

It’s quite a delightful little exhibition regardless of your interest in the movies themselves.

Oh, and you leave via the fire escape, which has a most unexpected surprise — Chuck Jones‘s 1988 mural for London’s Museum Of The Moving Image is still there.

The LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition is at the BFI Southbank until 1st October and is free to visit. You need to book your free tickets in advance – from here. The exhibition is upstairs, go up to the mezzanine walkway and it’s at the far end.

The animated film season is also on now, and details are here, and children get free entry.

This article was published on ianVisits

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