Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

No, it’s not the missed opportunity that’s currently being sold on the bookshelves. If you’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to thumb through that book, you would’ve surmised that the only artist that worked on pre-production for Coraline was Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi. While we know that Tadahiro’s work is brilliant, the ‘visual companion’ is a complete slap in the face to all the other artists who worked on the production. Have no fear, though. The best way to see pre-production art of Coraline is to view it online. Here, I’ve created a nice tour of sorts for you (click on each name for much more art):

First up, early character and conceptual work by Dan Krall. Ronald Searle is definitely an influence:

Next, we visit Chris Appelhans for some visual development and color studies. The artists’ were definitely using Tadahiro as a point of reference:

More visual development, color studies, & props by Jon Klassen. Beautiful work, with a great sense of space and color:

Now, check out the fantastic character designs by Shane Prigmore:

More great character development by Shannon Tindle:

Stef Choi also did some early concept sketches. Check out the cute, little garden characters. Here’s a shot of Coraline & her mom:

Finally, gorgeous sculptures of all the Coraline puppets by Damon Bard. Be sure to check out all his galleries while you’re visiting his site. Incredibly talented guy:

In fact, there was a great deal of other incredibly talented people who worked on the film, but were never mentioned in the book. Vera Brosgol, Graham Annable, and Andy Schuhler, among others. (UPDATE: Katy Wu is another vis-dev artist.) Shane Prigmore does a great job listing more of the artists responsible for the look & style of the film. Be sure and check out all their hard work.

UPDATE: Kevin Dart just informed me that Chris Turnham has started up a blog for Coraline production art. Chris did some extensive work on the Fantastic Garden sequence:

Hope you enjoyed the tour. Come back again soon.

Related:
Coraline Artist Panel at Nucleus
The Marketing of Coraline
Coraline Site Up

Gallery Nucleus recently hosted a Coraline Production Artist Panel, and over at Steve Lambe’s blog, he’s posted the majority of the event online in segmented YouTube clips, courtesy of Sean Szeles who recorded the talk.

I’ve only posted the first one here, but all eleven can be seen at Steve Lambe’s blog.

And with those words, the folks at Weiden + Kennedy went right to work, creating a very curious marketing campaign for Coraline, the stop-motion animated, Henry Selick-directed film produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. They certainly had their work cut out for them. I’m thinking that this ugly poster (along with the ABC series of one-sheets featured below it) certainly couldn’t have been anything that W+K concocted. When you compare that garish poster with the one featured above, one has to wonder what’s going on. It looks like to me that W+K took over the campaign from a clueless film promotion team at Focus and then went a more subversive route by sending ‘mystery boxes’ to various bloggers (mentioned previously):

Of course, I’m speculating here. I really don’t know what happened. All I know is that the ad campaign took a decidedly different turn once I learned of those mystery boxes. And the official movie site, too. That was done by W+K as well. Be sure to check this post out, as there’s lots of talented people who worked on the campaign. With a $16.8M (USD) take for the first weekend, I think they succeeded (it wasn’t expected to do more than $10M for a movie like it). See video clips, too.

Also on W+K Portland’s blog: Coraline Premiere. (Look for a shot of the Joe Ranft puppet that has a cameo in the beginning of the film.)

One more thing: Cartoon Brew on the Ranft Bros. in Coraline.

This is certainly promising. It’s the first in an all-new series with acclaimed illustrator P. Craig Russell (KILLRAVEN, ELRIC, THE SANDMAN, CORALINE) discussing graphic storytelling and sequential art. In this installment of PCR TV he looks at the opening page of the comics adaptation of Pelléas & Mélisande and explains the decisions he made about panel layout, timing, and composition. Great stuff.

Coraline.com has been up and running for some time now, but with nothing worth noting. Until now. And it looks good. So far, I’m very impressed with the PR campaign for Henry Selick’s up-coming stop-motion feature produced entirely at LAIKA. First of all, check out the mystery packages they sent out to various members of the press. You’ll notice from that post a password to enter once you’re on the film’s site. Enter it (buttoneyes) and you’ll be treated to a vignette on the various characters in the film. There’s more. I’ve been able to scrounge around other passwords (thank you, internets), if you’re curious:

stopmotion
moustachio
puppetlove
armpithair
sweaterxxs
UPDATE: otherworld

Enjoy! (Oh, and Focus Features? We here at Drawn! are still waiting for our ‘mystery boxes’. Just so you know.)

Hey, even though I’m not working there anymore doesn’t mean I won’t promote the good people who’ve been working hard for several years on Henry Selick’s upcoming Coraline. LA Times has a nice showcase of on-set photos of the production. Worth a look.

Also:
Huge artistic stakes are riding on Henry Selick’s “Coraline” – Oregonlive.com article about how Selick, Phil Knight & Co. are not expecting success in the conventional sense. From the article:

Selick has a more old-fashioned notion, aspiring to find an audience over time that will revisit Laika’s movies for years to come.

Says the director: “Making films that will hold up forever is our greatest hope.”

Here’s the teaser trailer for Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. This is the trailer that was shown before fellow 3D flicks Beowulf and Hannah Montana, so if your movie-going habits are anything like mine, you haven’t seen this yet!

Neil Gaiman has Quicktime and DivX formats for the Flash-weary.

Previously: Coraline Teaser

Here’s a nice Christmas present thanks to Neil, Henry, & Co.: A quick sneaky peek at Coraline, the stop-motion animated feature that’s currently in production at LAIKA Entertainment. (And, for the record, I work at LAIKA/house, the commerical division of the same company. In no way does this affect my writing for this post [insert wink here].) Written and directed by Henry Selick, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, Coraline will be the very first stop-motion feature to be shot stereoscopically with a dual digital camera rig for digital 3-D exhibition.

It’s not much, but there’s enough in the clip to get an idea of how intricate the animation is on Coraline herself. Oh, how I wish I could say more about this film (but can’t) — obviously, a short clip doesn’t do this film any justice — but soon they’ll have an official full trailer out sometime before next summer. (There was a 3-D teaser trailer that was shown only in front of 3-D showings of Beowulf.) The film’s slated to open in Feb. of 2009.