LONDON.- The Design Museum has opened LAIKA presents WILDWOOD: The Exhibition, a new exhibition created in collaboration with Portland, Oregon-based stop-motion animation studio LAIKA. The exhibition follows the London premiere of Wildwood, directed by Travis Knight, at the BFI London Film Festival, where the film has attracted widespread critical acclaim from publications including Forbes, The Telegraph and Variety. It opens ahead of the film’s UK and Irish cinema release on 23 October 2026, offering audiences a unique opportunity to explore the design, craft and technology behind LAIKA’s filmmaking before experiencing the finished film on screen.
The exhibition marks a significant first for LAIKA, bringing the studio’s creative process to a major public exhibition ahead of the film’s release in cinemas. It explores the development and making of Wildwood, from early visual research and concept art to character design, puppet fabrication, miniature set construction, animation and cinematography.
After more than 20 years of creating acclaimed animated films, including Coraline (2009) and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), LAIKA has developed a distinctive approach to stop-motion filmmaking. Bringing together 170 objects from the studio’s archive, the exhibition reveals how artists, designers, model makers, engineers and animators collaborate to create richly detailed cinematic worlds.
The exhibition shows visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the creative and technical processes involved in building a stop-motion world. It brings together original creative material, production objects, costumes, filmmaking tools, audiovisual content and interactive installations, revealing the work of the visual development artists, model makers, scenic painters, and more.
Focusing on Wildwood, the exhibition traces the development of the film from early ideas and visual research through to character and environmental design, costume, puppet fabrication, rapid prototyping, miniature set construction, animation and cinematography.
LAIKA’s films are created by stop motion, the cinematic practice of photographing real, three-dimensional objects in constructed environments, with puppets moved incrementally between frames. The exhibition examines how handcraft and technology work together across this process, from intricate costumes and mechanical armatures to miniature sets, animation rigs, lighting and camera techniques.
It also presents stop-motion as a multidisciplinary design practice, demonstrating how storytelling emerges through collaboration across design, engineering, making and technology. By revealing the breadth of careers involved in bringing a stop-motion feature to life, the exhibition also aims to inspire future generations to see animation not only as an artform, but as a viable and rewarding creative career path.
Wildwood will be released by Black Bear in UK and Irish cinemas on October 23 2026.
The exhibition begins with a free-to-visit introduction on the museum’s mezzanine, situating Wildwood within LAIKA’s wider history and exploring the relationship between handcraft and technological innovation across two decades of filmmaking. Arranged as a timeline, the display features a puppet from each of LAIKA’s earlier BAFTA and Academy Award®-nominated films, alongside behind-the-scenes photography and early concept art. Highlights include one of the original puppets used in Coraline (2009), displayed alongside the interchangeable faces that gave the character her range of expressions.
In the main exhibition space, visitors encounter a large-scale installation inspired by the Impassable Wilderness of Wildwood as seen in the film, creating a transition from the museum into the Wildwood cinematic universe.
The exhibition takes visitors behind-the-scenes of each stage of production revealing the creative journey from early ideas and experimentation through to finished puppets, environments and sets as they appear on-screen. Visitors will explore techniques, materials and processes from LAIKA's dedicated teams, including Puppet Fabrication, Animation, Stop Motion Rigging, Lighting, Camera and Visual Effects. Early visual development sketches, concept paintings and development material reveal how the visual world of Wildwood took shape, drawing on the landscapes surrounding Portland, Oregon. Further displays explore how characters, animals, costumes, architecture and environments were developed as parts of a coherent fictional ecosystem.
The exhibition then moves into the processes of physical production, and presents examples of the techniques and materials used to transform designs into objects capable of frame-by-frame performance. Visitors will encounter elements including puppet armatures, costumes, sets and production tools, before exploring how animation, lighting and cinematography bring these components together on screen.
Integrated audio-visual installations feature artist interviews and behind-the-scenes studio material, while cinematic elements give visitors further insight into the precision and decision-making involved in stop-motion production.
David Burke, Chief Marketing and Operations Officer, LAIKA, said: “Wildwood represents everything LAIKA believes animation can be: emotionally resonant, visually ambitious and made by artists, craftspeople and technical innovators working at the highest level. This exhibition gives audiences a rare opportunity to see the extraordinary artistry and ingenuity behind the film, from its puppets and costumes to its sets and environments and to understand how thousands of individual creative decisions come together to build a cinematic world. We are thrilled to partner with the Design Museum to bring that process, and the world of Wildwood, to London.”
