The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy Halloween-Christmas film directed by Henry Selick, and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, the King of "Halloween Town" who stumbles through a portal to "Christmas Town" and decides to celebrate the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score, and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.
List of stop motion artists
Selick studied animation at CalArts in California in the late 1970s with classmates John Lasseter, Brad Bird, and John Musker. Joe Ranft, Tim Burton, Jorgen Klubien, and Rick Heinrichs also attended CalArts, and both groups worked together at Disney Studios, with Ranft, Burton, Klubien, and Heinrichs collaborating with Selick in the years that followed on his feature films. While an animator at Disney, Selick received a grant to make an experimental short film, "Seepage", that combined hand-drawn animation with life-size cut-out human figures that he animated with stop motion. Leaving Disney in the early 80's, Selick moved to the Bay Area of California to work on the cut-out animated feature, "Twice Upon A Time" as a sequence director. He went on to direct many stop motion TV ads including nine Pillsbury Doughboy spots, but it was his work on his stop motion ads for MTV and his short pilot episode, "Slow Bob In The Lower Dimensions", that caught the public's eye and reunited him with his old friend Burton, who, fresh off his success as a live-action director, revived his brilliant idea for a film, "The Nightmare Before Christmas", and asked Selick to direct it. Selick put together a studio in San Francisco called "Skellington Productions" with producer Kathleen Gavin and production manager Phil Lofaro and grew his small band of story artists, animators, puppet makers, set builders, and lighters – including Ranft, Eric Leighton, Trey Thomas, Anthony Scott, Paul Berry, Pete Kozachik, Bo Henry, Bonita DeCarlo, etc. – into a full-fledged production team who spent three years making the film. Burton, directing first "Batman Returns" and then "Ed Wood Jr." in Los Angeles while "Nightmare" was being made up north, reviewed storyboards and footage every weeks and sent his talented collaborator, Rick Heinrichs, up north to develop the look of Halloween Town in the film.