LAIKA and Intel Use Machine Learning to Make a Dramatic Impact to Movie Making

LAIKA, best known for its Oscar®-nominated hybrid stop-motion feature films Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link, is always striving to innovate the animation medium. The studio harnesses advanced technology to expand what’s possible in its films. In 2016, LAIKA earned a Scientific and Technology Oscar® for its innovation in animated filmmaking. Hear from the technical masterminds at LAIKA, VFX Supervisor Steve Emerson and Production Technology Director Jeff Stringer, who will share the behind-the-scenes efforts and technological innovations that go into making LAIKA’s award-winning films. Learn how LAIKA partnered with Intel to develop tools powered by machine learning and AI that accelerate its digital paint and rotoscoping tasks with the goal of learning and accurately predicting multiple shapes, open and closed, in relation to the image while ensuring spatial smoothness and temporal coherence. Machine learning typically relies on large amounts of data to build models. Intel and LAIKA collaborated on a counterintuitive solution with smaller amounts of data predicated on the stop motion animation process. This is just the beginning of where the LAIKA team is headed in developing an efficient set of tools and steps for gathering the training data and building AI nodes as they design new characters.