Crafting the Epic World of Kubo: A Conversation with Laika’s Animation Supervisor Brad Schiff

Animation Supervisor Brad Schiff stands on the scaffolding needed to work on the Giant Skeleton

Brad Schiff is the Animation Supervisor on LAIKA’s latest feature film, Kubo and the Two Strings. After almost twenty years in stop motion, Brad’s worked on some of the most memorable stop motion projects of our generation. Upon graduating from film school in 1995, Brad moved to San Fransisco to be in what was then the hub of the stop motion animation scene. James and the Giant Peach was wrapping production, Disney had just bought ABC, and cancelled Bump in the Night. Those were the two biggest stop motion projects happening at the time, and it seemed like he had just missed the wave. It wasn’t until 1998 that he landed his first gig in New York on Celebrity Death Match.

Six months later, he moved to Portland to work on The PJ’s. Shortly after he moved onto Gary and Mike, for which he won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in 2001. Brad got his first opportunity to work on a feature film in 2004 with Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. “I went to London to work on that. That was a blast, a group of incredible artists who had all been dying to work on a stop motion feature. It was mayhem, and a lot of fun. That film started this incredible string of stop motion features, which was Corpse Bride, Coraline,