LAIKA animators photograph the maximum number of increments for cinema projection, 24 frames per second. In industry vernacular, this is known as “shooting on ones”. That means for every second there are 24 unique poses an animator creates. LAIKA is likely the only stop motion feature studio in the world that shoots on ones, as a rule. LAIKA films hew closely to the “naturalistic” style, which requires the painstaking technique of shooting on ones.

Sir Lionel’s bagpipe, which he uses to attract Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, was made with a specially-built latex balloon which was inflated and deflated through syringes.

The reins, bridle and saddle on the horse are made from real leather that had been thinned down dramatically to achieve the required scale. Many of the books in Lionel’s study were also leather bound using authentic bookbinding techniques.

Adelina’s hair uses nearly 2,000 feet of multi-colored silk thread in various colors (over 1/3 of a mile) which are then blended and styled by hand to mimic the shapes and linear qualities of the pen and ink illustrations of the "Gibson Girl" look.

The exterior train is an actual working train on rails that was pulled by a motorized winch. It ran too smoothly along the rails, so bits of tape painted to look like rust were added to the track so that the wheels would bump along for more authentic carriage motion.

The smallest camera head used at LAIKA was built for the interior of the Manchuria ship set. It allowed the camera to be mounted to a long pole and then sent down inside the long corridor of the ship to capture animation.

The Animation Tracker software and controller, newly developed for Missing Link, use a series of knobs which are linked to encoders on motors. An animator can use the controller to remotely move elements on sets. (This was used extensively in animating the Elephant, for instance.) The software provided a visual graph, mapping of the position of the Elephant, and allowed the animator to compare that position to prior frames.

There were 64 individually rigged ice blocks which could be independently controlled for the shot in which the ice bridge begins to break.

To achieve the shot in the ice pit, in which Mr. Link’s face is reflected in multiple facets of an ice wall, an array of 10 cameras was set up to simultaneously capture each individual reflection at a different angle.