Kubo and the Two Strings is proof that stop motion has gotten too clean

Today we watched the behind the scenes featurettes for Kubo and the Two Strings and Paranormin, and thought the Kubo one was significantly shorter, you could see the vast differences in animation technique between the two films. I believe stop motion features have begun to rely too heavily on CGI backgrounds and effects, which dramatically reduces the allure of the film. While Paranormin used green screen for some of its backgrounds, there was barely a single shot in Kubo that wasn't almost entirely green screen. There were far less practical sets in Kubo than there were in Paranormin, and it's even noticeable while watching the film. I saw Kubo for the first time last week, and was constantly turning to my friend asking "wow, how did they do that water effect with stop motion?" and "how did they do those backgrounds with stop motion? That's incredible". Now I know the answer: they didn't. With Paranorman, however, they cut as few corners as possible. For example, the scene where the zombies erupt out of the ground could have easily been enhanced with CGI. However the artists instead decided to hand craft each piece of dirt and rock that would explode out of the ground with the zombies. Though this was undeniably more work, it stays true to the art form and enhances the movie overall. The best part of stop motion films is the fact that they are stop motion! It's impressive to see these inanimate clay models come to life, and its exciting to see the was animators work around difficult concepts such as water and smoke. The smoke in Coraline, for example, is made out of cotton. Isn't that much more charming than simply using real or CGI smoke?