‘Isle of Dogs’ Production Team Dove Into Japanese Art and Culture

Author: Valentina I. Valentini / Source: Variety

Every design element of Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs,” his second stop-motion animated film after 2009’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” started with an authentic reference point.

Set in a dystopian Japan, the Fox Searchlight picture, to be released March 23, imagines a world in which flu-stricken canines have been quarantined on a remote island.

A boy, Atari (voiced by Koyu Rankin), travels there to search for his pet, Spots (Liev Schreiber).

Co-production designers Adam Stockhausen and Paul Harrod scoured Japanese artifacts — from clothing to light switches to sink faucets — for inspiration. While the film pays homage to Japanese art and culture, the designers allowed themselves some latitude to convey Anderson’s vision.

“For me,” says Harrod, a veteran stop-motion guru with extensive work in sculpting and modeling, “the main design touchstone was [director Yasujirō] Ozu, whose films [“Tokyo Story,” “Late Spring”] I’ve always loved. I’m not alone in seeing a kinship between his and Wes’ work. Ozu’s use of set design and architecture served as a huge inspiration for a lot of our interiors and domestic scenes.”

Early on, Stockhausen, who designed Steven Spielberg’s upcoming “Ready Player One” and also worked on Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Grand…

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