MoPOP’s ‘Hidden Worlds’ pulls back the curtain on Laika’s stop-motion films

The magic of stop-motion cinema comes in how that which is not alive can be given life before our eyes. Otherwise inanimate characters are instilled with a beating heart by the hands of countless craftspeople who work for months to create stories that leap off the screen. When the lonely young character in “Coraline” begins to discover her world is not what it seems, the expressions that cross over her face are the result of painstaking work audiences will usually never see. That is, unless they were to go to a new exhibit at the Museum of Pop Culture that puts all this on display. 

Showing through Aug. 24, 2024, “Hidden Worlds: The Films of Laika” pulls back the curtain on stop-motion by taking museumgoers through all of the films we’ve seen, from 2009’s “Coraline” all the way through to 2019’s “Missing Link,” as well as a glimpse of one we haven’t yet: the upcoming “Wildwood.” Made in partnership with Portland’s Laika Studios, it is an exhibit where the scale and scope of the work needed to make a feature-length stop-motion takes the breath away. Be it in the dozens of small faces frozen in time or a 16-foot-tall skeleton towering over you, it reveals the minutiae of the magic itself. 

This was no small task as, like the films themselves, creating an exhibit is an art form in its own right. 

Amalia Kozloff, longtime curator at MoPOP, said conversations about the project began in early 2021 and that MoPOP was in constant communication with Laika to make its first stop-motion exhibit. Kozloff designed it so that each film would have its own dedicated section to be traveled through. 

“We brought in a lot of very iconic puppets and sets, though we also had a lot of conversations with Laika about things that haven’t been seen in the public before,” Kozloff said. “We really wanted to home in on this behind the scenes, these hidden worlds. It was choosing artifacts that no one has seen before, which was pretty exciting.”

Rosie Alyea, manager of graphic design for exhibits at MoPOP, highlighted how exhibit components show how characters were initially conceived before coming to the screen. 

“We were able to work with their team to feature a lot of concept art at very large scales,” Alyea said. “A lot of those visual elements that you’re seeing are really in their studios.” 

This was all part of creating an immersive feeling where it’s almost as if you’re walking onto set and seeing all the various parts of a production. There are immense structures like the Pink Palace apartments, where Coraline and her family move to, as well as the smaller characters themselves with their eyes swapped out by the still-unsettling buttons that seem like they may swallow your very soul in their depths. 

“You’re entering into those worlds,” Kozloff said. “Playing up that title of ‘Hidden Worlds,’ we’re flipping it on its head a bit where the visitor becomes the puppet because all of a sudden, you’re at scale with our set design. It’s just really playing with that sense of scale and behind the scenes.”

Some great nuggets of information convey just how much creativity has gone into expanding each subsequent production. Some of this comes from technology: Laika created 6,333 hand-painted faces for “Coraline”; for “Kubo and the Two Strings,” that rose to a whopping 100,000 3D-color-printed faces. These were then modeled by the team at MoPOP as they were putting the exhibit together.  

“A lot of it has to deal with technology with our team, as well. We’re working with interactives, we’re working with amazing lighting design and set design and builds and different technologies, like laser cutting, all these things, 3D-printing,” Alyea said. “We really tried to incorporate what they used and what they do behind the scenes and how they create with how we created, as well, so that there’s a symbiotic relationship.”