Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" is a captivating stop-motion animated Gothic fantasy musical film, co-directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton. Released in 2005, the film has garnered attention not only for its storyline and music but also for its distinctive character design. This article delves into the inspirations, design choices, and the intricate process behind creating the memorable characters of "Corpse Bride."
Victorian Inspirations and Exaggerated Eccentricity
The overall design for the land of the living is based on the Victorian era. The characters' features are very exaggerated and eccentric which suits Tim Burton’s style and also reflects design from the Victorian era. The film is set in an English village in the 1800s.
Contrasting Worlds: Color and Symbolism
One of the most striking aspects of the character design in "Corpse Bride" is the stark contrast between the land of the living and the land of the dead. The living are depicted in black, white, and grey, while the dead are vibrant and colorful. This design choice symbolizes that even in unfavorable circumstances, something positive can emerge. As producer Allison Abbate noted, “People in the land of the living are dead, and in the land of the dead are lively.”
In the land of the living, the character design certainly evokes the repressed feeling of those people who live "upstairs". The land of the living is “very repressed, uptight, frigid society” according to the puppet maker Peter Saunders. The film cleverly inverts expectations, presenting the land of the dead as more alive and fun than the land of the living.
Even Victor’s color in land of the dead is different from when he is in the land of the living. In the shot of Victor in the pub with the guys from the land of the dead, the overall colors are much more vibrant, and the shadow on Victor’s face is more purplish. In contrast, when Victor is in the land of the living, his face is more grayish, reflecting a tintype look.
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The Whimsical and Fairy-Tale-ish Vision
Despite incorporating horror elements, the art direction aimed to maintain a "whimsical and fairy tale-ish" quality. This is evident in scenes like Victor's arrival at the pub in the land of the dead, where the potentially horrifying death of the dwarf is presented in a stylized manner.
The Genesis of Character Design: Burton's Vision and Grangel's Refinement
One of the most important things for character design is the vision. Tim Burton’s vision is paramount. Tim Burton created sketches of the "Corpse Bride" long before production began. These visions capture the essence of what Burton thinks and feels.
Character designer Carlos Grangel played a crucial role in expanding Burton's initial sketches into detailed character designs, emphasizing their personalities.
The Puppets: Turning Vision into Reality
After finishing the character design, it is time for puppet makers to turn Tim Burton and Carlos Grangel’s Visions into reality. The puppet makers faced the challenge of translating these designs into tangible puppets with complex structures and gears. The mechanical faces of the puppets, for instance, contained intricate gearing systems that allowed animators to adjust facial expressions. Puppet makers needed extensive technical knowledge and a clear understanding of the character designers' vision to ensure the puppets fit seamlessly into the world of "Corpse Bride."
The puppet fabrication supervisor at Three Mills, Graham G. Maiden, whose credits include Mars Attacks and Chicken Run, oversaw the use of the Corpse Bride puppets, the bulk of which were manufactured by world-renowned puppet builders Mackinnon & Saunders.
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The Intricacies of Puppet Fabrication
The creation of the puppets was a meticulous and time-consuming process. MacKinnon & Saunders had a team of sculptors. For each character there is a maquette made, samples of fabrics and samples of color were provided. The company MacKinnon & Saunders did a majority of the early development work. It is in this stage where they work out the size of the head and the amount of expression they want within each character.
Maintaining the angles and proportions of Burton's designs was a significant challenge, particularly the tall, lean figures with tiny feet. Merrick Cheney, an armature maker who had worked on "Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach," was consulted to resolve these issues.
The graphic quality within Tim's designs factored into the costumes as well. A jacket would be sculpted like somebody was wearing it, made to look like the clothes the figure was wearing fell in a static shape. A core was created representing that shape, then a mold, and finally the shape of the jacket gets covered with fabric. Although it looks really graphic and beautiful, it does cause limitations on movement. The majority of the skin on the puppets is made from silicone and foam that is painted later. First, the head is baked in foam, then trimmed back, and cast again in silicone. Silicone gives it a smoother look and it’s also a lot more durable. If we just went with foam that would crease and the paint would come away. Silicone actually makes the skin last much longer and is easier to maintain.
The Sheer Scale of Production
Another shocking fact I learn during this research is they made 14 Victors, 14 Corpse Brides, and 13 Victorias. The reason I was shocked is because making only one puppet need a skilful puppet maker to takes a very long time as those main character puppets are very detailed and complex. These huge amount of main characters just make the work become even harder and longer. But these are all necessary. As animating process of stop motion is very slow. Animators always need to calculate the amount of movement, then adjusting rigs and characters check lights, and at the end taking one shot. And this amount of work is only for one frame. So they need to animate different setups at the same time with different but the same puppets. The scale of puppet production for "Corpse Bride" was immense. Animators often need to work on multiple setups simultaneously, necessitating a large number of puppets for the main characters. They made fourteen of her. It sounds outrageous but we actually did because some shots we shoot we only saw her legs and sometimes we only saw her upper torso. We literally cut her in half. We could have done with more to be honest with you. We had twelve Victors and twelve Victorias. There is a character called Barkis and in the first few scripts he wasn’t much of a character but he eventually became more and more, so we ended up making seven of him when originally it was meant to be five.
Challenges and Solutions in Puppet Design
Creating devices to put expressions in the puppets was another real challenge for us. The designs for these are extremely intricate. We used a mechanical approach which involved putting a gearing system in the smallest size head possible, otherwise, the larger the head the larger the puppet; the larger the puppet the larger the set. The approximate height of all the puppets we ended up using was around 17 - 18 inches. We managed to get a gearing system the size of a small orange and have it accessible through the back of the head. Paddles and strings with fixing points within the skin were attached to the gearing system. This allowed us to manipulate the puppet’s expressions. The puppet of Victoria, for example, has a hole in her bow in her hair and also in her ears, as does Corpse Bride and Victor. You access the gearing system with an Allen key and turn the gears that open and close her mouth, that way they can make her smile or pout. The hands are all silicone with a wire armature inside again with a paddle with a hole in it over the palm that is capped. As for the feet, they’ve got tie downs in them, which basically means that there is a hole where the toes would be and then there is a hinge, like on a door, and another hole by the heel or the center of the foot. One of the characters is Scraps, he is Victor’s dead dog in skeleton form and he has tiny, tiny feet. They were too small to support his weight. One of the most unexpected things we bumped into was with Victor. We had these fantastic armatures made for him and all the costumes made and we found out that he could not actually touch his nose or his head with the arms that we had so we went to a very crude way of making the arms with a traditional ball and socket joint.
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The skirt for Corpse Bride herself was quite a challenge because again, we needed to have a continuity of shape. There were 14 individual puppets of Corpse Bride that had to match up exactly the same. So a sculpture was done of the skirt that was later molded. Each skirt was individually wired or weighted depending on what the shot was like and which animator was using her. Some animators might just have the front two slits in the dress wired and weights in the back, while some animators wanted to have her completely wired or completely weighted.
The armatures are where Merrick Cheney came in. Merrick worked on Nightmare Before Christmas, so he dealt with these type of problems before with Jack Skellington. He has quite a unique way of making an armature, the actual angle and knee have to be extremely strong.
The intricacies of creating Corpse Bride’s hair also presented unique challenges. All the puppets have to look the same, and yet she’s got quite wild messy hair that also has to animate. What we did was use a combination of a brass skullcap that had wires that were attached to foam that was baked over it. Over this mohair was impregnated with silicone. We individually looped and curled the hair with the silicone and glued that into the head. With the eyes, the biggest problem was the blinking. The technique that was developed proved to be extremely expensive for the lead characters, particularly Corpse Bride and Victoria. For the other characters, even Victor, we used back form plastic over a preformed shapes making a set of eyes to complete a blinking sequence. What we found was that we had made sets which we thought would be fine when animated but as we went along we realized that we needed them to do more. So we added additional sections to each blink. You can have up to seven, eight, maybe nine sections per blink if you want them done really, really slow.
The Enduring Legacy of Corpse Bride
"Corpse Bride" has left an indelible mark on the world of animation. The film was the first stop-motion film to be shot digitally, using a Canon EOS-1D Mark II digital SLR, which brought a unique realism to the visuals.
The film premiered at the 62nd Venice International Film Festival on September 7, 2005, and was released on DVD on January 31, 2006, and on Blu-ray on September 26, 2006.
Critics lauded the film for its artistry and emotional depth. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film four out of four stars, saying, "If his The Nightmare Before Christmas from a dozen years back was a treat for the eyes and mind, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride goes double or nothing by being a delight for the ears and also the heart." Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film three and a half stars out of four, calling it "Corpse Bride is an unexpectedly touching celebration of love told in a quirky and inventive style." Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "A sweet and visually lovely tale of love lost."
"Corpse Bride" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It also won the National Board of Review Award for Best Animated Film and the British Animation Award for Best European Animated Feature.