‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ and the Pioneering Stop-Motion Animation Work of Director Henry Selick

Jack Skellington famously sings “What’s this?” when first discovering snow in the seminal stop-motion animated feature The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it’s a question that audiences likely asked upon initial release in October 1993. The strange animated feature that embraces German Expressionism and macabre character designs feels atypical of family-friendly fare yet spends the bulk of its narrative exploring the Christmas holiday as an outsider. Disney understandably felt nervous about releasing the feature, one so removed from their usual output, but misfits everywhere ensured that The Nightmare Before Christmas would eventually become not only a widely embraced classic but one of the most marketable films ever for the brand. It also happened to be the masterful feature debut of filmmaker Henry Selick.

The Nightmare Before Christmas originated from a poem penned by Tim Burton, and, thanks to the success of Burton’s short film “Vincent,” was acquired by Disney for development as a series, then as a special. But it fell into limbo for a stretch. Eventually, the project was revived as a feature film, with Burton collaborating with Disney animator Henry Selick. With Burton preoccupied with Batman Returns, Selick took the directorial reins on the painstaking stop-motion animated feature. But releasing the film under Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas meant that audiences attributed the film solely to Burton for years, overshadowing Selick’s impressive work that catapulted the film into a Disney classic.

Stop-motion animation, arguably one of the most painstaking, excruciatingly intricate art forms, involves manipulating puppets via frame-by-frame photographs to create movement when played back. Toss in facial expressions on top of character movement, and you have an obscene number of pictures required to create a single scene. That’s just to paint a brief portrait of the intense labor required to make a stop-motion animated movie. But Selick wanted to push the medium even further by forgoing the familiar flat surface employed in stop-motion to instead build full-blown set pieces for the characters so the camera could track them in a more immersive way, giving texture and dimension to this unique cinematic world.

Henry Selick and Tim Burton. Photo Credit: Disney

While Selick also made tweaks on the character design to ensure they popped on screen, like giving Jack Skellington’s suit its iconic pinstripes, the director worked closely with the performers, and occasionally composer and singer Danny Elfman, to ensure the music integrated with the imagery in ways that reinforced the movie’s themes and the stark contrast between Halloween Town and Christmas Town. The concept, character designs, and ideas are largely Burton’s, but the technique, form, and emotional center owe much to Selick’s direction.

Selick’s work in stop-motion animation didn’t end with The Nightmare Before Christmas. The director reteamed with producer Tim Burton a few years later on a stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. Selick’s Monkeybone integrated stop-motion into live-action, though its peculiar tone didn’t strike with audiences upon release. That’s okay because his follow-up, Coraline for LAIKA (the studio’s first feature), earned Selick an Academy Award nomination and, thanks to a rather nightmarish Other World run by The Beldam, created stunning gateway horror for a new generation.

Last year brought Selick’s collaboration with Jordan Peele on Wendell & Wild, making this the third decade in a row that the artist/director has delivered solid gateway horror to audiences through stunning, masterful stop-motion animation. In the current digital age, where everything moves at a rapid pace, creating more reliance on VFX and computer animation, Selick’s dedication to such a meticulous art form is refreshing, and it yields breathtaking results.

The Nightmare Before Christmas turns 30 this month, and much about this holiday classic has already been explored in the three decades since its release. The music, the affecting performances by the voice cast, the peculiar world, and its quirky, horror-embracing denizens. All of it provides a comforting holiday film for those, like Lydia Deetz, at home with the strange and unusual. Strangely, though, its director remains one of the more undersung aspects of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Selick pushed the art form forward right out of the gate for his feature debut and understood Burton’s vision in a way that’s difficult to imagine anyone else could.

The most exciting question, three decades later, isn’t whether The Nightmare Before Christmas classifies as Halloween or Christmas holiday viewing. It’s what young, impressionable mind Selick’s work inspires enough to become a future stop-motion animator great to carry the medium forward in the way Selick has, himself inspired by the innovative, ground-breaking animator Ray Harryhausen as a child. Jack Skellington’s sense of wonder at discovering new textures and culture remains timeless, and The Nightmare Before Christmas still evokes a feeling of awe. There’s so much depth, visually, that you can still pick out details upon new watches even today. Much like its director, it’s a pioneer in stop-motion animation.

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