EXCLUSIVE: Longtime Laika executive Jeff Stringer has been upped to the post of Chief Technology Officer at the Portland, Oregon-based animation studio.
Stringer’s promotion comes following his more than 13-year run as the company’s Director of Production Technology. He will now head up its newly reorganized Technology Group, which combines the creative talent and resources of the formerly independent IT, Production Technology and Business Systems departments. The restructuring reinforces the strategic role of the Technology Group as active partners with Production and Business Operations and will help Laika establish studio-wide technology standards, thereby helping it to scale up production, modernize operations, and usher in new innovations. Stringer reports directly to the studio’s President and CEO, Travis Knight.
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Said Knight: “The fusion of art and technology has been essential to our company since its founding and since 2008 Jeff has been central to that creative effort. As our studio grows, technology is increasingly important to achieving our goals and vision. The work of our technology teams is more critical than ever before, particularly as they face the challenge of our latest feature, Wildwood, the most ambitious film we’ve ever taken on, which we believe will set new standards for artistic and technical achievement in stop-motion/CG hybrid filmmaking. I can’t think of anyone more able than Jeff to lead us into an increasingly complex and challenging technological future.”
Boasting 25 years of experience in the technology sector, Stringer joined Laika as Director of Production Operations in 2008. In his subsequent role as Director of Production Technology, he led the development of Laika’s enterprise digital scheduling system for stop-motion fabrication and stage planning, and in partnership with Head of Production Arianne Sutner, conducted studio-wide postmortems after each film to capture new production methods and set goals for improvement, among many other impactful contributions. He currently leads the studio’s efforts to integrate virtual production and game engine technology into its filmmaking tools.
Founded by Knight in 2005, Laika’s first five films — Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Missing Link (2019) — were all nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Kubo also earned a BAFTA Award and an additional Oscar nom for VFX; Missing Link, meanwhile, won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film. A leader in the field of stop-motion, Laika was additionally awarded a Scientific and Technology Oscar for its innovation in 3D printing back in 2016.
The studio’s sixth animated feature Wildwood, based on the book series by Colin Meloy and illustrator Carson Ellis, is currently in production. Laika is also now developing its first live-action feature, based on screenwriter John Bronlow’s action-thriller novel Seventeen, as well as the animated feature The Night Gardener, in partnership with and based on an original idea by Ozark co-creator Bill Dubuque.
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