![]() Travis Knight was made a board member after only a few years of being an animator, and now, as well as being President and CEO, he is responsible for directing, producing, and animating Kubo and The Two Strings. It’s a sad story for stop-motion hero and original founder, Will Vinton, who is said to have coined the term ‘claymation’ he was overwhelmed by Phil Knight’s increasing power (because the studio continued to fail, Knight was asked for more and more money) and Vinton was eventually pushed out of the still eponymous company. When he first invested in the failing Will Vinton Studios in 1998, his son, Travis Knight, began working there as an intern. LAIKA is owned and chaired by Nike co-founder Phil Knight. On their 15 th anniversary, LAIKA still feels young, but with Pixar generally becoming dull and stunningly formulaic, there is a treacherous yet tangible place opening-up for LAIKA as America’s most original, mature teller of children’s stories. They are the black sheep of mainstream American animation studios, telling gothic, complex tales of loss, companionship, and fear in haunting stop-motion. But while being praised by critics and, on average, earning well at the box office, LAIKA has still not breached film culture in the same way that DreamWorks, Disney, and Pixar have. Released with little fanfare, Kubo and The Two Strings was a confirmation that the underrated animation studio, LAIKA, were putting the obvious contenders to shame.
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