Animation Deconstruction

Here are two different images from the animated movie The Nightmare Before Christmas:

Producer Tim Burton was adamant about the visual appearance of this movie to be primarily associated with darker tones and grim looking, black settings to match the themes of Halloween, ghosts, and monsters.  Regarding color, Burton instructed animator Henry Selick to use a variation of hues that rest on the darker side of the palette.  Both of these images have an affinity for this aspect; the top image showing a snake that is devouring a tree to be striped black and mustard yellow in a shrouded room, and the bottom image displaying Santa Claus wrapped in a black bag surrounded by a town built out of entirely stone bricks whose color resembles that of bituminous coal.  The brightness in both images only serves as whatever contrasts the scene.  For instance, the sterling silver Christmas tree in the above frame and Santa Claus’s bright red suit in the bottom are the outliers of each picture.  To convey such dark tones, Selick made sure to also saturate these colors to intensify their darkness.  This can be seen in the town bricks in the below photo, as well as Santa’s suit; and the above snake’s color, to draw more attention to it.

Since striving for a dark and eerie atmosphere is the goal with this animated film, brightness is a key factor in developing every frame.  There is no foreground to be seen in the below image, but shadows are completely apparent in the first picture.  The screaming child is enhanced by his shadow, as is the snake and the doorframes.  As with all typical symbolism, objects that are lit most brightly are the ones that hold some sort of considerably good or well-being significance.  In these images, those brightly lit objects are the Christmas tree (a symbol of togetherness and giving) and Santa Claus (a holiday icon, who stands for the same morals).  The Nightmare Before Christmas’s mood can be seen easily within these pictures.  As I explained earlier, the central emotion that can be felt during this movie is a sense of dourness and grisliness, as illustrated by consistent dark colors and dimly lit backgrounds.