Nightmare Before Christmas Artwork: Trick or Tree - Canvas

Call for price and availability! The Story

Having seen the merriment of Christmastown, Jack Skellington decides that, for once, the dark denizens of Halloweentown should be in charge of Christmas. Only his secret admirer, Sally the lovelorn rag doll, wonders if Jack's plan to claim Christmas is as misbegotten as it sounds.

The Artwork

This unique stop-motion animated film, which took over 140 artists and technicians to produce, deserves an extraordinary presentation like a specially created triptych. Triptychs originated in ancient Rome as a writing tablet with three hinged waxed leaves, later evolving into three hinged images used to decorate buildings, especially churches. This special triptych is now offered in a canvas edition celebrating the Gothic glory of Tim Burton¹s Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

Sally was not part of the delightfully twisted tale's origin as a Dr. Seuss-like poem written by Tim Burton in the early 1980s. When the poem was developed as a film, it was clear that the lead character, Jack, needed a soul mate. The solution was Sally, a Frankenstein-like rag doll, sewn together from mismatched scraps by the Evil Scientist, Dr. Finklestein. Screenwriter Caroline Thompson explained that Sally "is Jack¹s truest friend. Only she understands what Jack is going through because she, too, dreams of something else from life. They are very much alike, but there is one crucial difference: while Jack's dilemma gives Nightmare Before Christmas its plot, Sally¹s gives it its heart."

>From the earliest drafts and drawings of the original poem, Jack Skellington was the central character. "I love Jack," Tim Burton said. "He is a bit misguided and his emotions take over, but he gets everybody excited." Nothing illustrates this better than the triptych's central image, from the film's "The Town Meeting Song" number, in which the Pumpkin King scares up support for his vision of Christmas among the other creepy citizens of Halloweentown. . Nearly 230 actual sets were designed and constructed. 227 puppets painstakingly created from foam with a machined armature inside were created to star in the film. Two years of actual production resulted in the most elaborate stop-motion film ever created, with unique characters unlike any ever seen. The result has been screams of delight from audiences everywhere.

These character images were created using the fine art printing process of color reproduction known as giclée. In this process, a computer-based digital file is printed by spraying millions of pixel-sized drops per second onto premium-quality, acid-free paper with an enhanced printer, specially modified for fine art reproduction. Based on actual film moments from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, a hand oil-painted reproduction was digitally scanned and modified to create this canvas editions.