Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

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.

Start saving your pennies, kids. It was reported today in the Publishers Weekly’s Children’s Bookshelf Newsletter that next month Candlewick Press will release Henry Selick’s Moongirl as a children’s book. Included with the book will be a DVD featuring the short film (previously blogged about here) which was directed by Selick and produced by Laika. According to PW Children’s Bookshelf, this book/DVD combo marks the first time a short film has been distributed through the book industry.