Movies

These Rare Photos Show How ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Became a Whimsical Halloween Classic

See how Tim Burton and his team brought Jack Skellington’s spooky world to life frame by frame

By Abbey Bender October 25, 2025

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1. Hanging with Jack and Sally

© Buena Vista/courtesy Everett Collection

There’s a common misconception that Tim Burton directed The Nightmare Before Christmas (the movie is even sometimes called Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas), but he was actually the creator of the story and characters (first conceptualized and illustrated in 1982) and producer, and filmmaking duties went to animator Henry Selick, in his directorial debut. Here, Burton poses with the puppets used for the main characters, Jack and Sally.
2. Director in action

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In this candid from the set, Burton (wearing a snazzy purple patterned shirt) and Selick discuss a shot. Take note of how small the sets and puppets actually are—the wizardry of stop-motion animation makes them seem larger-than-life and truly transporting on the screen.
3. A musical muse

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Here, Burton (once again wearing a cool shirt, this time covered with skeletons) and musician Danny Elfman (wearing a shirt for the ’90s cartoon The Ren & Stimpy Show) pose in the recording studio. Elfman, who got his start as the frontman of ’80s new wave band Oingo Boingo and famously created the Simpsons theme song, is one of Burton’s most frequent collaborators, and has worked with him on nearly 20 films. His work is featured prominently in The Nightmare Before Christmas, as he wrote all of its music and provided Jack's singing voice.
4. Sketching Skellington

Barry King/WireImage/Getty

In keeping with The Nightmare Before Christmas’ kooky sensibility, a pop-up book (one of many pieces of merchandise) was released to coincide with the film. At a 1993 party promoting the book, Burton signs a copy with a drawing of Jack Skellington.
5. A spooky reindeer

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The Nightmare Before Christmas is filled with creepy yet charming takes on holiday imagery, like skeleton reindeers. In 2009, one of the reindeer puppets, pictured here, sold at auction for $12,980.
6. Nightmare at the museum

Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty

Burton’s aesthetic is instantly recognizable, and his decades of work have been displayed around the world in the traveling museum exhibit “The World of Tim Burton.” Here, you can see some of the puppets on view in the show. A lot of labor went into getting those puppets to come to life, as the film was shot on 20 soundstages with a crew of over 120 workers, and 109,440 frames of film were used to animate the 227 puppets.
7. Many mouths

Stefano Guidi/Getty

What are all those little pieces in front of the Mayor of Halloween Town puppet? They’re detachable mouths in different expressions that can be swapped in and out to make the character appear to speak and sing. Jack Skellington alone had over 400 heads, so you can only imagine how many different pieces were required to get a movie with so many quirky characters in motion!
8. BFFs

Dave Benett/Getty

When Tim Burton first drew Jack Skellington, we bet he never imagined one day posing with a life-size version of him! While The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fantastical film, Jack is one of the characters Burton feels closest to and the director has called him a “character that’s perceived as dark, but is really light,” adding, “Those are the kinds of things that I love, whether it’s [Edward] Scissorhands or Batman, characters that have that. It represented all those feelings that I had. I was perceived as this dark character, when I didn’t feel that way. So it was a very personal character.”

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