HILLSBORO, Oregon — Have you been spending some of your quarantine time watching LAIKA movies? Or scrolling TikTok for hours on end? Now you can do both at the same time, because the Hillsboro-based stop motion animation studio now has a TikTok.
If you're not familiar, TikTok is a social video platform where people post videos up to one minute long featuring dance challenges, pranks, songs, life hacks, and really anything that your mind could think up.
And as we already knew long ago, the LAIKA animators are really great at coming up with new ideas and creating new ways to put them into video form. So it makes way too much sense that the studio would start making TikTok videos.
Each one is like a mini LAIKA movie, in one minute or less.
The studio posted its first video on the platform at the end of April, showing how the character Norman from Paranorman comes together.
One TikTok feature allows users to perform a "duet" with another TikToker, so naturally, LAIKA used this to create a duet with Madame Frou Frou from The Boxtrolls.
Or is Mr. Link your favorite LAIKA character? Here's how the sasquatch has been spending his time stuck at home.
Have you loved watching videos of people singing from their apartment balconies in quarantine? Here's the LAIKA version.
LAIKA may have arguably won the TikTok fight challenge with its version that has almost two million views at the time of writing.
If you're curious about that adorable little ice cube with a face on it in that fight challenge, no, it's not from an upcoming LAIKA movie (as far as we know right now). It's just a new character the animators created in "ice-olation."
Speaking of social distancing, LAIKA used TikTok to show how it's done in stop motion.
Have you given yourself a quarantine haircut? The LAIKA animators gave one to a basketball.
Or maybe you've been spending your time at home doing puzzles? So have the LAIKA animators (and if you're wondering how the heck they made this, they made a behind the scenes version of this one too).
And if you've been wanting to try stop motion animation yourself, and you have some extra time right now, follow this quick TikTok tutorial to set up your own mini LAIKA studio at home.
Cassidy Quinn is the host of Tonight With Cassidy on KGW. But right now, like many of you, she is working from home, trying to focus on the happier things going on in the world. Tonight With Cassidy is currently on hiatus, but you can watch previous segments from the show here, and follow Cassidy on TikTok @cassidyquinntv.
