"The initial impulse for doing it was the love of Dr. Seuss and those holiday specials that I grew up watching, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Those crude stop-motion animation holiday things that were on year in, year out make an impact on you early and stay with you. When I first wrote the poem I had Vincent Price in mind as the narrator. He was the overall inspiration for the project because initially I was going to do it with him narrating, like a more expanded version of Vincent. It was after Vincent, so I was really into stop-motion...To me, in claymation the design elements get lost...The characters that were designed for Nightmare had the added burden of not having any eyeballs. The first rule of animation is: Eyes for Expression...I thought if we could give life to these characters that have no eyes, it would be great. So, after drawing all those foxes with their wet drippy eyes at Disney, there was a little subversion in having these characters with no eyes. It was funny to think of a character that had these big black holes and to try and make that work."
-Tim Burton, Burton on Burton |
