By all obvious signs, hes very good at both of his jobs.

Heres how our conversation went.

Can we start by going back, way back?

Id love a potted history, starting at the moment you became involved with Will Vinton studios.

What would you like to know?

Its been quite the journey, much like the unlikely stories of our characters.

When I was a kid, I adored it, specifically stop motion animation.

I did a decent job at it.

Do you remember what shot it was?

It was not interesting.

But you could animate her with simple pantomime gestures.

I got a ton of professional experience in a short time.

How did you get to your position in this group?

What was your break?

So, really, at that point you felt like you just had to stand up.

Somebody had to, or the community would be scattered to the breeze.

Thats when it shifted from me being an artist to me being an executive, a leader.

We brought technology into the mix in a way that it hadnt been before, with stereoscopic photography.

I have some specific questions about your pioneering techniques.

So, imagine Im an animator.

You know what thats like better than most.

Or are the 30, 40 animators…

20.

…20 animators working with 300 or 900 face pieces?

ForKubo, 48 million facial expressions.

I have four expressions.

But the origin of these face parts… does that design come from the animators?

Its an update of what George Pal did with his Puppetoons.

Im interested in the pipeline.

The stage animator does have some input.

Left to their own devices, animators have their own idiosyncratic styles.

It has to look like Kubo is Kubo, not 20 different Kubos.

In the end it has to come down to one creative voice, one vision, one mind.

In this case, on this film, that was me.

Really, the thing that binds the idiosyncratic styles, visions and voices together is the director.

In the end, its all decision that I had to make… working with the artists.

Its very different to the pipeline in other animated media.

And in CG you have a supervisor, unifying character animators, in their way.

We talked about George Pal physically sculpting from a hand drawn prototype.

What you have is a high tech development of that old idea.

We obviously still have light shining on solid objects, its photography that seems to be the cardinal rule?

There are some people shall we call them purists?

who think stop motion should be a certain way, the Harryhausen herky-jerky style.

That never goes away.

I dont think that it being nuanced and subtle means that stop motion has lost its charm.

No its stop motion is starting to live up to its potential.

We could never had madeKubohad we not madeCoraline, or thenParanormanandThe Boxtrolls.

Theres been a seismic shift.

Its very hard to put together a status quo of Laika from the information available publicly.

There wont be a film in 2017.

One film a year is where were going, but it takes time to get there.

For the first time ever we overlapped production, betweenKuboand our next film.

Were shooting it now.

Physical production, right?

Is it one of the ones Ive heard about?

Im not going to say!

There will probably be an announcement soon, in the next few months.

I suppose well have to wait.

Travis Knight, thank you very much.