LAIKA Experience

The LAIKA Experience was held in the Gaslamp District of San Diego. The experience started a few days before San Diego Comic Con took place. The LAIKA Experience was there for about a week and their last day was the same day that SDCC ended.

This was one of the events that we really wanted to attend and see as you don't get the opportunity to see items that went into making animated or stop-motion animated films in person. You usually only see them on TV or in books. This was something that you don't get to see very often. LAIKA has been doing experiences like this with the most recent was at Universal Studios Hollywood back in 2016. It was probably a few weeks after SDCC ended back then and we were unable to check it out back then.

Our mission was on Sunday, yes, the last day of SDCC to get in line early to check out the LAIKA Experience. It was either this or try for the Netflix Experience that featured Stranger Things. The line for Netflix was already super long by the time we walked up the street for the LAIKA Experience.

We were in line early before the LAIKA Experience opened. It took us about 3 hours to get in and get a guided tour from a LAIKA employee. What was great about LAIKA, is that they had staff come out and check the line to see how long it was and gave out fans to everyone in line. They also had Kubo & Monkey in costume come out every so often to take pictures with people in line.

During the tour, we stopped and looked at the models & sets from each LAIKA Stop-Motion Animated Movie (Coraline, Kubo & The Two Strings, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls etc... They even share some movie magic on how they got certain sets to light up and also how they had a lot of different face plates with a lot of different expressions which they could easily swap out instead of having to make a lot of different heads.

Also, Nike made Limited Edition shoes for each movie and they were on display as well. At the end of the tour, we could enter to try and win one of the Limited Edition shoes. We didn't win but that's okay. They also had a small area to purchase merchandise. A lot of things were already sold out which was understandable seeing how that was their last day there too. They did open a LAIKA online shop recently so you can purchase items that were out of stock during the experience.

Absolutely loved the LAIKA Experience!!! Probably could've stayed all day but hopefully we'll get another chance to see the LAIKA Experience again in the future. More animation companies should do these. This here made up for wasted Friday at SDCC.

Check out all of our pictures below in our slideshow!!!

Photos by Tara & Tracy

LAIKA Experience

Written by Tara