It’s crazy how technology has developed in the past 20 years. The latest consumer craze? 3D printing, of course! It hasn’t only been featured on shows (with a special mention on The Big Bang Theory), but it’s been used in a broad variety of ways [1]. Miniatures of yourself [1], your face in chocolate [1], miniature of yourself in gummy [1], or candy [1].

Its most striking use, because of its practicality, was how they used 3D Printing in the making of ParaNorman. Technically speaking, it was that usual “wow, why didn’t anyone else think of this before?” Printing the many faces needed to be able to animate your stop-motion movie. It gets the consistency so your animation doesn’t get blotches, and you get incredible detail (I LOVE THE LIGHT GOING THROUGH NORMAN’S EARS).

The question that arises is- if they print the faces needed to animate, once they’ve done the movements in a CG environment. Is it stop-motion? Mixed media is more common than ever. There was a lot of special effects in ParaNorman, especially in its incredibly visual last arc, but the film is still considered stop-motion. So how much use of the computer do you need to have for it to not be stop-motion?