Behind the scenes of the ‘ParaNorman’ set (VIDEO)

It's been a few years since audiences have seen a new film from the folks at Laika, the Portland-based animation studio best known for creating the 2009 stop-motion animated film "Coraline." But the company has actually been hard at work on their latest movie, "ParaNorman," since before their last movie was released.

First pitched by writer/director Chris Butler ("The Corpse Bride") as "John Carpenter meets John Hughes," "ParaNorman" is the story of Norman, a kid with a very unusual ability: He can see and talk to ghosts. Norman's odd talent has made him an outcast in the town of Blithe Hollow, but when a centuries-old curse threatens to destroy the small New England hamlet, it's up to Norman to use his powers to save the day.

As it turns out, stop-motion animation is a time-consuming and difficult way to animate a movie (hence the three years of production on "ParaNorman"), but it's a process that breathes life into characters in a way that computer animation still cannot match. The technique, also called stop-frame animation, involves animators painstakingly moving puppet characters and objects in very small increments and photographing those movements one frame at a time. When played back at the full speed of 24 frames per second, the resulting shots combine to create a fully-animated character or scene. It's a very slow process, and for more complicated sequences it might take an animator a whole day just to do 14 or 15 frames worth of action.

See more: 'ParaNorman' showtimes and tickets

The basics of the stop-motion technique have remained largely unchanged for more than a century, from Willis O'Brien's pioneering animation work on the original "King Kong" and Ray Harryhausen's creature effects on adventure films like "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Jason and the Argonauts" in the 1960s, to more recent feature film examples like "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Chicken Run," and "Coraline." But as the behind-the-scenes video below demonstrates, things are changing with "ParaNorman."

Like other stop-motion films, all the characters, sets, and objects on "ParaNorman" have been meticulously handcrafted by teams of artists, engineers, and builders. But unlike previous films of this type, Laika is using computers quite heavily to aide in the making of the movie, though not in the way you might think.

Once a puppet of a character has been created in real life, it's scanned into a computer so that CG artists can manipulate a virtual version of it. Hand gestures, facial expressions, mouth movements (for lip syncing) and other minute changes to the character can then be created and tested virtually, and then printed out using advanced 3D printers. A 3D printer does exactly what it sounds like -- it prints 3D objects -- and Laika has been using the novel new technology to great effect on "ParaNorman."

See also: Photos from 'ParaNorman'

The 3D-printed parts mean that a character in the film might have hundreds of different faces that can be swapped in and out to create the appearance of facial expressions or mouth movement. With thousands of different swappable faces, Norman, the film's main character, has over 200,000 possible expressions. Multiply that by the dozens and dozens of characters featured in "ParaNorman," and you begin to see why it has taken Laika so long to create the movie.

But that insane attention to detail hasn't only gone into the characters in the movie. The sets and objects that make up the world of "ParaNorman" have also been fastidiously constructed by the folks at Laika, from the tiniest can of pop and the dirt under Norman's bed, to the Mystery Machine-like van featured in the movie and the massive town hall at the centre of Blithe Hollow. The largest set used in "ParaNorman" was about 80 feet wide, which may not be impressive for a live-action movie, but when all of your characters are less than a foot tall, it's something worth considering. Every little thing on that comparatively enormous set had to be created from scratch by an army of artists and model makers.

All the hard work looks to be paying off for Laika, though. Based on the trailers and behind-the-scenes material, "ParaNorman" is an absolutely gorgeous film to look at, one that has been handcrafted and lovingly assembled in a way that a CG animated film just can't rival. If you liked "Coraline" for its amazing visuals and twisted sense of humour, then "ParaNorman" will likely be right up your alley.

"ParaNorman" will start haunting theatres in 3D on Aug. 17.