Into the Enchanted Forest: Inside the Design Museum’s Spellbinding Celebration of Laika’s Wildwood

Main Facts: Bringing the Pacific Northwest to London

There is a distinct, borderline surreal sensation that washes over visitors as they cross the threshold of London’s Design Museum and suddenly find themselves deep inside an enchanted forest. This immersive spatial experience is the beating heart of Wildwood: The Exhibition, a landmark behind-the-scenes showcase that offers an uncompromised, microscopic look at the making of Laika’s latest stop-motion epic, Wildwood.

Running at the South Kensington museum until January 10, the exhibition pulls back the heavy velvet curtain on the Portland-based animation studio’s infamously painstaking production process. From the earliest, speculative concept sketches scribbled on loose paper to the meticulously engineered miniature sets, bespoke puppets, and intricately stitched costumes that eventually find immortality on screen, the display serves as a masterclass in modern cinematic craftsmanship.

Based on the 2011 fantasy novel of the same name by Colin Meloy—frontman of the indie rock band The Decemberists—and illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis, Wildwood leans heavily into the rugged, moss-draped topography of the Pacific Northwest. Laika, known globally for pushing the boundaries of stop-motion animation, treats the forest in Wildwood not merely as a backdrop, but as a living, breathing character with its own agency, history, and temperament.

The exhibition occupies a vital cultural space, bridging the gap between fine art and industrial design. Among the hundreds of objects on display, visitors can inspect tiny sections of scenery that reveal the astonishing density of texture and detail Laika packs into environments that might ultimately occupy only a few fleeting seconds of screen time. Elsewhere, exposed puppet armatures lay bare the complex mechanical skeletons hidden beneath layers of simulated fur, silicone skin, and hand-loomed textiles, illustrating the sheer volume of physical labor required to capture a performance frame by frame.

Chronology: From Oregon Woodlands to the Silver Screen

To understand the scale of Wildwood, one must trace the timeline of both the production itself and Laika’s storied two-decade history. Founded in 2005 under the leadership of Travis Knight—who also directs Wildwood—the studio carved out a defiant niche in an industry increasingly dominated by frictionless CGI. Over twenty years, Laika has systematically redefined what stop-motion is capable of, releasing a succession of critically acclaimed modern classics: Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), and Missing Link (2019).

The journey of Wildwood began long before cameras started rolling in Portland.

• 2011: Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis publish Wildwood, capturing the imaginations of readers with a sprawling fable set in an impenetrable forest on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon.
• Pre-Production & Development: Laika optioned the book, initiating a lengthy visual development phase. Production designer Nelson Lowry, working closely with director Travis Knight, began the process of translating the illustrative style of the book and the physical reality of Oregon’s geography into a three-dimensional cinematic universe.
• The Design Phase: Lowry and his team utilized reference paintings by famous landscape artists, historical photographs, and color studies. Through an iterative process of building small-scale tests and lighting them on stage, the visual "bible" of the film was established.
• Principal Photography & Construction: Physical construction ramped up across Laika’s expansive studio spaces. A massive crew of sculptors, painters, riggers, and animators went to work constructing sets and bringing characters to life.
• October 2026: Wildwood hits cinemas worldwide on October 23, closely following the opening of the Design Museum exhibition in London, offering audiences a simultaneous chance to experience the film in theaters and examine its physical artifacts up close.

Supporting Data: The Scale of Wildwood

Numbers alone cannot capture the magic of stop-motion animation, but they offer a staggering perspective on the sheer industrial and artistic magnitude of a Laika production. The scale of Wildwood represents one of the most ambitious undertakings in the studio’s history:

• 136 distinct physical locations were designed for the film.
• 104 separate stages were utilized concurrently to shoot the various scenes.
• 49 specialist animators worked tirelessly alongside a wider production crew.
• 2,775 individual shots make up the final theatrical cut of the movie.
• 236 unique puppets were fabricated for the production, ranging from human characters to fantastical beasts—including a jaw-dropping, life-sized golden eagle boasting an impressive five-foot wingspan.
• 6 feature films now comprise Laika’s celebrated twenty-year cinematic catalog, celebrated in a dedicated free display on the Design Museum’s mezzanine level.

Official Responses: Insights from the Creative Frontline

Translating the unruly, chaotic beauty of nature into controlled, miniature stop-motion sets is a notoriously difficult balancing act. Production designer Nelson Lowry shared insights into this creative struggle during an interview detailing the philosophy behind Wildwood’s visual world.

"There is so much variety of natural beauty in Oregon, we were spoiled for choice," Lowry explained. "I also live on the edge of Forest Park, so inspiration was five minutes away."

However, capturing that organic wildness in miniature presented unexpected hurdles. Lowry drew a parallel to everyday human experiences with photography: "We’ve probably all had the experience of taking a picture in a beautiful landscape to share with friends, only to see in retrospect that the photo doesn’t represent our experience. That can be a pitfall of building sets as well."

To bypass this, the team adopted unconventional prototyping methods. "We created models of trees and rock shapes and laid blankets over them to observe what would become the under-structure of our forest," Lowry noted. "We wanted the world of Wildwood to feel like it existed before the film and after—as if we just dropped in to tell a story. With artwork and a lot of look development [building sections of sets as tests], we attempt to build something that has that ‘wow’ factor."

Detailing the collaborative cadence of the studio, Lowry described the design workflow as fiercely refined after two decades of iteration. "We start with references—paintings by famous landscape artists, photographs, and color ideas. I play ‘hot and cold’ with the director [Travis Knight], and then we launch into sketches." Once those sketches secure approval, they serve as the unshakeable law of the land for the rest of the production.

Implications: The Hybrid Future of Traditional Craft and Technology

The implications of Wildwood: The Exhibition stretch far beyond mere nostalgia or fandom appreciation; they point directly toward the future of hybrid filmmaking. While Laika is fiercely protective of its roots in traditional, tactile stop-motion, the studio has never been dogmatic about shunning modern technological tools.

Instead, Wildwood showcases a seamless marriage between analog craftsmanship and cutting-edge digital innovation. Most of the physical design assets featured in the film were systematically 3D-scanned, allowing Lowry and his visual effects team to integrate physical miniatures effortlessly into a digital compositing pipeline. Furthermore, when physical construction reached its logistical limits—such as expanding the dense, endless thickets of the magical forest—VFX set extensions were deployed. Digital printing technologies were likewise leveraged to manufacture expressive puppet faces and intricate props with micro-level precision.

"Anything that gets us there is utilised," Lowry remarked regarding this pragmatic hybridization.

This philosophy is precisely what makes Laika’s work so vital to contemporary design and cinema discourse. In an era dominated by fully digital pipelines and generative AI shortcuts, exhibitions like the one at the Design Museum serve as a vital tactile reminder of the human touch. They honor the patience, calloused fingers, engineering ingenuity, and artistic vision required to move physical matter one fractional millimeter at a time.

For visitors walking through the gallery halls—and for audiences sitting in dark cinemas watching the forest come alive—Wildwood proves that true cinematic magic is not conjured out of thin air, but forged through relentless dedication to the physical craft of storytelling.