Traditional Animation Gallery

Tim Burton is an american filmmaker, artist, writer, and animator that was born on August 25th 1958 in Burbank California. From his early teens, he developed a passion for drawing, painting, and fantasy/horror films. He is the son of Jean Burton, who was the owner of a cat themed gift shop and William Bill, who was a former minor league baseball player that was working for the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department. As a preteen, Burton would make short films in his backyard on Evergreen Street using crude stop motion animation technique or shoot them on 8 mm film without sound. At the age of 21, Burton joined Disney animation team in 1979 after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts. However, his idea and style of animation didn’t correspond with what Disney was and he left within a year.

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Tim Burton is also known for his dark, Gothic, eccentric horror, and fantasy films. Some of the movies that he is also known for were The Nightmare before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie. Those were the animated films that he has worked on; he has also directed live-action movies. A fun fact about Tim was that he got engaged to Lisa Marie in 1992, who was the inspiration for Sally, from The Nightmare before Christmas. Burton was also the one who popularized stop motion animation and is why it became a unique and different form of animation. He was compelled to utilize this style of animation because it could bring something purely imagined to vivid life in a way that 2-D animation couldn’t. 

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For his first directorial endeavor as an apprentice animator at Disney, Burton chose to film Vincent in 1982 using his beloved technique because it had a “crude elegance,” and the articulated movements of the puppet reflected the “totally exposed feelings” of the Vincent Malloy character, a little bored suburban boy who dreams of being a tragic mad scientist. Burton grew up enamored of Universal horror movies such as James Whale’s Frankenstein because he gravitated toward a technique that could help him bring monsters to life. One thing Burton said about Frankenstein is that “He's perceived as a monster, even though he isn't really. He's just different."

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Tim Burton wouldn’t be who he is today if there weren’t people that influenced him. Some people that influenced him were Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, and the Grimm brothers. Burton likes to offer the darker perspective that is visible in most children’s stories, which makes his movies different than the average Disney movie. Burton worked for many years at Walt Disney Studios, whose approach to adapting fairy tales tends to understate the more sinister elements. Burton, however, embraces the dark elements. He was also influenced by Christoper Lee, who appears in Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and other movies as well.. All of these people that influenced him were really creative artist that made an impact in his life.