Travis Knight is not your run-of-the-mill studio CEO, nor your usual animator … or film director for that matter. It's fair to say that the 43-year-old multi-hyphen filmmaker comes to movies via an entirely original route. The son of Nike founder and chairman Phil Knight, Travis began his career in music, cutting a couple of records as a rapper in his native Portland, Oregon. Knight discovered his passion for animation with an internship  with claymation pioneer Will Vinton, and cut his stop-motion teeth while working on the award-winning TV series The PJs, produced by Eddie Murphy, before founding Laika Studios in Portland. Laika's first feature was Golden Globe nominee Coraline,  directed by stop-motion genius Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas), followed by Paranorman and The Boxtrolls (also nominated for a Globe). A stop-motion take on Japanese mythology and art, Kubo and the Two Strings is the latest Laika release and Knight's first directorial effort. We spoke to Knight about his studio and his inspirations (they include Ray Harryhausen and George Méliès).