Entertainment

The Boxtrolls brings family-friendly steampunk to theatres

The Boxtrolls hits theatres this weekend, bringing Alan Snow’s best-selling novel Here Be Monsters to the big screen.

'You can just feel all the textures,' says the animated film's Canadian director

The Boxtrolls' Canadian illustrator Graham Annable

10 years ago
Duration 2:14
Graham Annable, the Canadian illustrator and co-director of The Boxtrolls, describes the stop motion magic behind the new animated adventure

The Boxtrolls, the latest family friendly movie from Oscar-nominated animation studio Laika, hits theatres this weekend, bringing Alan Snow’s best-selling novel Here Be Monsters to the big screen.

The story — starring the voices of Elle Fanning, Simon Pegg and Ben Kingsley — follows Egg, a young boy who's adopted by a bizarre crew of underground creatures.

Elle Fanning and Isaac Hempstead Wright lend their voices to Winnie and Eggs in The Boxtrolls. The new family movie opens this weekend. (eOne Films/Canadian Press)

Laika established a reputation for quirky, yet brilliant, stop-motion and CGI work with Coraline and ParaNorman.

The Boxtrolls' director, Canadian animator Graham Annable, says this new story was just made for stop motion.

"There's something about the steampunk Victorian era that utilizes materials like none of the others have," Annable told CBC News.

"You can just feel all the textures in every frame that you look at."

In the videos above, Annable discusses the challenges of getting a good performance when working in slow motion, and comments on the state of animation in Canada.