The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a stop motion animation, in particular, a model and puppet stop motion animation, that tells the magical tale of Christmas and reminds viewers of the wonder Christmas can bring in a classical, dark, Tim Burton manner.

Burton and director Selick shooting a scene from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The animation itself consists of 227 puppets that were created to represent the characters with the main character 'Jack Skellington' having around 400 different heads to allow for every expression imaginable. Despite the animation being created through stop motion 'Sally's' mouth was actually animated digitally through the replacement method. 

Original armature and puppet used in the of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Examples of Jack Skellington's faces

More examples of the many faces of Jack Skellington.

I feel that this film was purely created for entertainment simply because of it's lighthearted story line and musical factor and I feel that it does exactly that; entertain. Although the story at first was considered too dark for children I feel that it is targeted at the family audience, as it contains elements for all the family from the celebration of two holidays and the fantastical worlds it is based in for the kids to the trickster characters that adults can find joy in.

Overall, I feel that this is a great piece of stop motion animation that both entertains and inspires it's audience. I also feel that the fact that it's a stop motion animation really helps to tell this story and adds to the atmosphere of the whole film, making that much more interesting and beautifully wonderful.