nightmare before christmas puppets
Even though The Nightmare Before Christmas is perfect whenever, this is the time of year that the film can truly be cherished. As the Christmas season kicks into full swing these puppets can help you gather the magic.
At 6 feet tall, the Jack Skellington puppet, from Folkmanis, is exactly what you’d expect if the character popped out of your screen. His pinstriped suit and curious expression even somehow match even his empty eyesockets. Puppeteers can control his mouth, arms, and legs easily. Unless you have a third arm, only one hand can be used at the same time as the mouth.
Jack’s limbs are thin (as most skeletons are), making his gigantic stature manageable. He’s light and easy to carry around. But, he can’t stand up on his own or even keep his head up, so plan to buy a display mechanism if you want to show him off (or just prop him up in a chair as I did). Storing him might also require some preparation, as his packaging is just a plastic bag.
Behind The Scenes
Zero, Jack’s ghoulish companion, is available as well because no king is complete without his best friend by his side! Zero is much smaller in size, but still huge on the detail. Hidden under his ghastly sheath are a battery compartment and an on-off switch for the light on the tip of his nose. His mouth even has a gradient color to make catching ribs or candy canes look more hauntingly realistic.
The detailed design of these puppets will have you hearing the beat to This is Halloween” every time you see them. Jack Skellington is $139.99 on Amazon, and his faithful companion has an MSRP of $53.99.
This Is Perfect Jack Skellington and Zero puppets, from Folkmanis, are full of hauntingly great details. Jack is 6 feet tall, but still manageable thanks to his thin limbs. Zero is smaller in size but still big on character. He's got a light-up nose to guide everyone through the holiday season.
Nightmare Before Christmas Stop Motion Puppets
Nicole is a social media editor contributing to the Pop Insider, the Toy Insider, and Toy Book. She gets all of her life advice from Michael Scott and there's not a sitcom she hasn't binged. A proud Hufflepuff, Nicole is dedicated to writing as fairly as she can about her favorite fandoms (and including puns wherever possible).
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Collectibles Review: Nightmare Before Christmas Puppets
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Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.As a movie fan, I am often fascinated as much by how something is made or how an effect is achieved on screen as I am about the finished film itself. Those gee-whiz moments that we all experience when we go to the movies and see something that makes us smile or wonder how the filmmakers created a particular look or effect. Because of those moments, many of us will go back and see a movie a second, third, or more times in the theater. I felt that way when I first saw the early dailies for
I was curious about how they made the film’s puppets and wondered what the filmmaker’s thinking was behind their design choices. Just look at the main character Jack Skellington with his slender legs and tiny feet. How could that puppet be animated or even stand on a set without falling over? Yet, I watched the film and marveled at how fluidly the characters moved across the screen. Regardless of how many times I’ve viewed the movie, the craftsmanship of puppet design and construction helped enable the animation, which collectively continues to pull me into the story.
The Nightmare Before Christmas Puppets
, more than 227 characters with elaborate articulating metal armature wireframes were custom designed, machined, and assembled at the Skellington Productions facility. The armatures included seventy-four individual characters and duplicates of the main characters. At least a dozen Jack puppets, six of Sally, eight Oogie Boogies, and numerous others were created because of the wear and tear they go through during the animation process. The team also needed duplicates so the same character could be animated simultaneously by different animators on different sets to meet the production schedule.
The creation of dimensional, articulating puppet characters for any stop-motion film begins with sculpting the characters. Visual consultant Rick Heinrichs, whose sensibility towards adapting Burton’s original designs was established early in their friendship, made full-size clay models of Jack, Zero, Sally, Santa Claus, and Oogie Boogie. Heinrichs, who had an original Jack sculpture from his days with Burton at Disney, created Jack’s new sculpture based on discussions with the puppet fabricators.
The fabricators had concerns about Jack and complained that it was impossible to make ball-and-socket joint pieces for the original sculpture design’s tiny feet and ankles. Yes, Jack’s feet were even smaller then what ultimately made it into the movie. It required some minor redesigns. New clay sculptures created for each character went through an approval process. Burton reviewed each sculpture, either in person or by viewing Polaroids, and gave notes. There are several surviving Polaroids that Burton drew on, indicating for the artists where changes were needed.
Nightmare Before Christmas Puppet And Scenic Design
It was not difficult for Heinrichs to create a new sculpture of Jack incorporating the notes he got from the team making the armatures. The armature is a simple metal superstructure, or skeleton, inside the puppet that allows the animators to pose the puppet frame to frame. It creates a stiff structure that holds its shape and adds stability to the puppets on the set. However, Jack had such thin legs and small feet that the animators had to fasten him to the ground plane on the stages to stand firm and not topple over. All puppets had to be tied down (through a hole drilled in the set’s ground plane) for every footfall. The animation can be jerky, and the action will pop in and out of the frames without a well-designed and thought-out armature. The armature is the most critical part of a high-quality stop-motion puppet and adds to smooth animation achievement.
Tom St. Amand and his protégé, Blair Clark, created armatures that would define the main character designs in addition to designing and building the humongous armature that gave Oogie Boogie his range of motion. According to St. Amand, “Armatures have to be practical. They are useful things that have to work well and be able to withstand a great deal of abuse and wrenching around. When I design armatures, I act out the moves myself and actually put the thing into poses before I hand it over to the fabricators and sculptors.”
“The main challenge with the puppets on this film was to make them animator friendly, ” St. Amand said. “Some of the designs had really small feet and spindly bodies, not typical at all for stop-motion, and we had to make them move with as few restrictions as possible.” The tiny feet and ankles were always a point of discussion once everyone saw Burton’s original designs. “Tom St. Amand came from ILM. He built his own copies of King Kong armatures. He was, you know, solid and strong, but he’s brilliant, ” said Selick. “And he figured out a way to make the entire foot out of metal and came up with a new way to do an ankle that could support him. And because Jack was so thin, it wasn’t as much mass up top. So, it was an engineering challenge, but Tom found a way.”
Sally's Song (nightmare Before Xmas Cover)
The other issue that the filmmakers had to deal with was facial expressions. The original designs that Burton had done in 1982 were opposite the Disney house style of wholesome, doe-eyed characters. It was an attempt to break out of the Disney mold, and do something different, go against the grain. In animation, one of the first things a viewer looks at is the character’s eyes. So, when Burton designed Jack,
