Summary
- Tim Burton worked on the concept of The Nightmare Before Christmas, but his ideas clashed with Disney's typical style.
- He made small but significant contributions to Disney films like The Fox and the Hound, The Muppet Movie, and TRON.
- Burton directed short films like "Vincent" and "Frankenweenie," which got him fired from Disney, but later returned to produce James and the Giant Peach.
Before he was an acclaimed director of many spooky yet mesmerizing movies, Tim Burton was an often uncredited animator in the animation department at Walt Disney Studios. During his time in the two-year young animator's program at Disney, Burton, Henry Selick and Rick Heinrichs first worked on the concept of The Nightmare Before Christmas. However, according to Kathleen Gavin, the co-producer of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton's "sensibilities didn't match up with the people who were running the studio" (The Movies that Made Us). And so, Burton moved on to other things.
Yet during his years as an animator for Disney, Burton made some small but oddly significant contributions to a few famous Disney animated classics. Burton also did some odd jobs for Disney revisited the Nightmare Before Christmas idea and decided to produce it. Burton was subsequently invited back to work on many more Disney projects – so many, even die-hard fans might not know about all of them.
8 The Fox And The Hound (1981)
Burton animated Vixey, the vixen who catches Tod's eye.
The first project Burton worked on at Disney was creating the simplistically-named female fox Vixey for a favorite Disney animated classic, The Fox and the Hound. Vixey appears in the final act and helps Tod adjust to life in the forest after he has been cared for by a human his entire life. Burton adamantly disliked animating Disney's typical cute and friendly-looking characters. He initially only did distant shots of Vixey but "grew to like her" by the time he animated the close-ups (via IMDB).
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7 The Muppet Movie (1979)
Burton was an uncredited "additional puppeteer" for Disney's The Muppet Movie.
Jim Henson and Frank Oz are among the cast of one of Disney's earliest movies featuring the Muppets. However, Burton was also enlisted to help manage the puppets for Kermit and friends' adventure in The Muppet Movie. He is among the puppeteers who operate over a hundred puppets in the finale. It is not clear if Burton did this before he began his animation apprenticeship at Disney. According to Vanity Fair, Burton's 1979 short film Stalk of the Celery Monster is what got Disney's attention, so this all happened around the same time.
6 TRON (1982).
Burton helped with the animation in the original version of the Grid.
His work on TRON is unclear, as he was uncredited, and the film mainly featured replicated environmental designs rather than individual characters.
Burton worked as an uncredited animator on the first TRON movie. The exact scope of his work on TRON is unclear, likely because (1) he was uncredited and (2) the movie does not have specific characters who need to be designed and would be assigned to individual animators, but rather much replicated aspects of the setting. While this is an interesting fact, Burton had nothing to do with the eventual TRON sequel, featuring a much sleeker version of the setting within a computer game.
5 Vincent (1982)
Burton's first independent project at Disney was a black-and-white stop-motion short.
While he was working at Disney, Burton directed a six-minute stop-motion short film titled "Vincent," which was produced by his co-conspirator Rick Heinrichs. Burton got to take a break from Disney's whimsical style and dive into developing his own macabre aesthetic with "Vincent." The short follows Vincent Malloy, a young boy who daydreams about being just like his hero Vincent Price. This marks Burton and Vincent Price's first collaboration, as Price narrates the short. "Vincent" was shown at the Chicago Film Festival.
4 The Black Cauldron (1985)
Burton created an unused design for the Horned King.
Burton worked on the divisive Disney movie The Black Cauldron as a concept artist. Despite being a critical and commercial failure, The Black Cauldron is much darker than most other Disney animated classics. If there is one Disney movie where an upstart Burton would have thrived, it seems like this would have been it. However, Burton's design for the movie's villain the Horned King went unused.
The Black Cauldron was the last Disney animated feature Burton worked on before becoming a filmmaker in his own right.
Burton reportedly also had an idea for the Horned King to have a hoard of minions inspired by the "facehuggers" from the Aliens movies (via IMDB). Concept art of this idea is included in the 2000 Disney DVD for The Black Cauldron. The Black Cauldron was also the last Disney animated feature Burton worked on before becoming a filmmaker in his own right.
3 Hansel And Gretel (1983)
Burton's second Disney short film combined live-action and stop-motion.
Burton followed up "Vincent" with his first live-action project: a short film adaptation of Hansel and Gretel. Burton used stop-motion to create the spooky forest and the monsters that live in it, while the title characters and other humans were played by live-action actors. Vincent Price also appears again. However, Burton's Hansel and Gretel was only on Disney Channel for Halloween in 1983. It was shelved because Burton was not pleased with the final result and the Disney executives thought it was too dark for their target audience (via IMDB). Copies of this short-film are not extremely difficult to locate.
2 Frankenweenie (1984)
Burton's first Frankenweenie movie got him fired from Disney.
Burton first worked on the story of a scientifically-minded boy resurrecting his dog in the form of a live-action short film. Disney reportedly fired Burton for "wasting" the studio's resources on projects that were too scary (via IMDB). "It wasn't like Alan Sugar saying 'You're fired'. I didn't quite get it that strong", says Burton (via Yahoo!). "But yes, we parted ways at that point." Ironically, Disney produced Burton's feature-length stop-motion version of Frankenweenie, which came out in 2012.
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1 James And The Giant Peach
Burton returned to Disney to produce a Roald Dahl adaptation.
After Burton shot to fame elsewhere in Hollywood, Disney was all too eager to welcome him back. He turned down directing The Nightmare Before Christmas, ing the job on to Henry Selick. Burton later co-produced Disney's James and the Giant Peach, which features a cast of characters in Burton's typical style, as well as a cameo from Jack Skellington. Burton went on to direct Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Dumbo for Disney.
However, Burton's relationship with Disney appears to still be strained. Burton reportedly said (via Entertainment Weekly), "My history is that I started out there. I was hired and fired like several times throughout my career there. The thing about Dumbo is that's why I think my days with Disney are done: I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus, and I needed to escape." Burton will doubtlessly continue to create iconic movies, but it is unlikely they will be Disney movies.
Source: IMDB (Vixey), IMDB (facehuggers), IMDB (Hansel and Gretel), IMDB (Frankenweenie), Yahoo!, Entertainment Weekly
