Brian McLean

Starting in 2006, working with a small team at a fledgling animation studio outside of Portland, Oregon, called Leica, we pioneered the use of using 3D printers for stop-motion animation to produce replacement animation.

Our novel idea was to take this 100-year-old technique of replacement animation and fuse it with 21st century 3D printing technology.

We'd harness the power and subtlety of the computer animation, but instead of rendering out a model like Pixar or DreamWorks would, we would send face geometry to a 3D printer and then have it become a physical object that would snap onto a stop-motion puppet.

Coraline was the first film to have 3D printed faces.

Over the course of the next 18 years and six films, Leica has continued to pioneer what stop-motion is capable of, as well as really redefining what's capable in the 3D printing industry.

At first, we started printing faces out of a single material, and we had to hand-paint things.

But then, for our next few films, we started using color printing.

Now, color printing was different than the inkjet or the resin printing we'd used before.

Colored glue is sprayed down onto white powder.

Now, the science behind this printer is the absorption rate between the liquid and the dry powder.

Together, they came together to create the geometry as well as the mixed color.

Now, the problem is we live in Portland, Oregon.

I don't know if you guys noticed, but it tends to rain a little bit here.

So what that means, if we printed a face in the summer and that exact same face in the winter, they would come out different sizes and different colors because of the humidity differences.

But it was the only color printer on the market, so for years we made do.

Now, we'd also design and engineer the entire head in the computer.

Computer modelers wore many hats.

They were first the sculptor that was sculpting the outside of the face, and then they would switch gears and become the engineer to engineer all the inner components.

Now, starting in 2016, something really exciting happened in the 3D printing world.

I don't know if any of you guys heard, but man, us 3D printing nerds were stoked.