Multiple puppets are made for the main characters, with 28 Coraline puppets. Each puppet has multiple pairs of backup hands, which are especially prone to wear and tear and often need to be replaced.

Hayns says the biggest challenge in making the puppets is that every part that the animator may want to control has to be made "animatable." "So you have to take into account that even if there's a tiny piece of fabric blowing behind [a puppet], you have to wire it or you have to put lead in it so it's animatable," she says.

Each puppet is then cast in a silicone substance to create the skin, then painted and given hair -- which also must be animatable. Selick says Susan Multon, head of the hair department, has created for Coraline the best-looking hair ever seen in a stop-motion movie. "Susan came along with this technique of actually animating hair and has perfected it with each character," Hayns adds. "She's designed all the armatures that go inside to make it work, and worked with the armature team."

Puppets also go through a painting stage, giving detail and definition to faces and even clothing. Applying paint to a puppet can be a very high-pressure task because the painter doesn't want to make a mistake after all the work that has gone in.

Up next is the construction department, managed by Lee "Bo" Henry, who shows off a highly detailed moving van and dolly constructed completely from scratch. Henry says it's incredibly rare that he or his crew use anything bought off the shelf, simply because the odds are against any commercial product having both the right look and scale. "We seldom find something that's of the right scale and appropriate in any kind of a buy-out situation," he says.

Henry's department has several sub-departments: models and props, construction and carpentry, and painting. There also is a sculpting department that creates landscapes for the film. The largest set on this film is the orchard set, which is 60 feet long. And, as with the puppets, everything must be animatable -- including the plants and grass, which needs to be able to look like it's being blown by the wind. On the fantastical garden set, dozens of colorful flowers need to bloom, and also must allow for Coraline and her Other Father to view the scene from above in a large "grasshopper" helicopter.

To create the 3-D effect, each shot is photographed using a digital camera that shoots a frame for one eye, then moves a very small distance and shoots the other. Photo credit: Galvin Collins.

Selick says Henry's crew builds more live-action sets than any regular movie can afford, and there are considerations other movies don't have to make -- mainly making sets accessible to animators. Large sets such as the fantastical garden are built to break away and have openings underneath for animators to reach through and adjust the puppets. Other sets have such simple devices as trapdoors and swing-away walls. It takes weeks to build sets -- some of which will only be seen for a few seconds in the final film.

The creative needs of the film require the same attention to detail that the puppet fabricators apply to their jobs. For example, the two worlds Coraline travels between are meant to be similar in form but to have completely different tones: The real world is flat and a bit more worn than the slightly glossier look of the Other World. And with 3-D an element in the movie, the Other World sets are constructed with more depth to make them feel more open and inviting than the comparatively cramped real world.

"We are shooting in 3-D and we wanted to take advantage and really show it off," says Selick. "To your eye, all you know is it feels better, but it's two different sets."

Completed sets are turned over to lighting before the animators begin their work. On one set, the film's lead cat animator, Sarah de Gaudemar, is animating a scene in which Coraline and The Cat walk through the Orchard to the edges of the Other World. She has a guide as to which position the characters' mouths need to be in to match the dialog in each frame, as well as a guide to key poses.

Selick says he encourages animators to work together, but most prefer to work solo. A few will shoot reference video, but not all -- and he's fine with that. "If you rely on live action to do the work for you, you're not really getting the essence of animation," he says. "When you go all the way to basing it on humans, like what used to be rotoscoping, where you trace actors, you see that if it's not done well, it's like the worst of both worlds. It's not great animation."