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.
Knightmare
"Knightmare" was conceived by Tim Child in 1985, inspired by the two ZX Spectrum games "Atic Atac" and "Dragontorc". Realising that if a ZX Spectrum could do these types of adventure game, then a television programme could revolutionise the genre, he enlisted the help of artist David Rowe to design realistic looking backgrounds with an airbrush. Borrowing the technique used in weather forecasts, Child devised a large blue room, which was set up in Studio A of Anglia Studios. The advanced computer graphic environments were created by the Travelling Matte Company using a Spaceward SuperNova computer. Travelling Matte was owned by set designer Robert Harris, who had trained at Central Saint Martin's in stage design and had been working with John Peyre at BBC TV when "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" started to blend digital images with real world studio scenery. Harris had a background in CGI, having trained in 3D animation at Middlesex Polytechnic under Dr John Vince, and experience in playing out "live" graphics for current affairs programmes like "Newsnight" and "Panorama". Knightmare required real time CGI inserts and virtual lighting changes, door reveals and animated monsters in real time, within live action against blue screen using Ultimatte.