The creation of Jack Skellington

Sarah posted about claymation earlier in October, and the video she put up about the making of Wallace and Gromit intrigued me. Everyone is familiar with the concept of stop-motion, but I don't think anyone that hasn't been involved with a claymation project realizes how much work goes into the creation of each and every frame, or more specifically, how a single character alone is created, brought to life, and then moves and changes within each frame. Because of this I decided to look into the making of one character in particular, Jack Skellington from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Below is Tim Burton's original sketch of the character:

After creating the look of a character, a story has to then be developed before the creation project can even start. This link goes to a picture of one of the many storyboards created for each scene of the movie.


Then comes the true creation process, the molding and making of Jack:


The intricate detail that goes into each and every one of Jack's limbs to give his character the perfect shape isn't lost on me, nor is the incredible amount of both facial and body expressions that have to created or positioned just so to bring Jack to life and make him smile, frown, stand, walk, or sing. Below is a video about the Facial expressions of both Sally & Jack.


The final product of the beginning of the song 'What's This?' is below. All that work, just for one quick scene!