The guys over at Steinberg have a quick interview with Supervising Sound Editor, Ron Eng and Sound Effects Editor, Steve Tushar for their work on Coraline.  Jump through for a quick excerpt and the sourced article.

Coraline is a 3D film using the elaborate stop motion technique. The film is often described as a “visual masterpiece”. What was (technically) the biggest challenge during the post-production work on Coraline?

Ron: The biggest challenge was to cut sound while only having a storyboard and unfinished pictures. Some of the more complex scenes we didn’t even see till late in the final mix process.

Steve: I agree with Ron here 110%. That is always the biggest challenge for animation jobs. Especially when they drop in a rough sketch that is only one frame per three or four seconds and they expect you to come up with the sound for it and you end up scratching your head for an hour.

Was it in any way different to work on an animated film in comparison to a “normal” one?

Steve: The main difference is you really have to find the right sounds to sell the scene and to make the audience really feel like they are there. Plus, you don’t get a reference of what anything sounds like that you are trying to replace. Normally you just listen to the production guide tracks to get a vibe for it, but not in animation.

Ron: Yes, there are several differences when you work in animation as opposed to live action. The biggest one being in live action is that all the audio is built in relation to the production audio recorded on the set, whereas in animation there is no set production audio – all the dialog is recorded in a quiet studio with no ambient noise married to it.

Source:  http://www.steinberg.net/en/artists/community_stories/sound_design_for_coraline.html