But when the late author's widow, Felicity, was approached by Selick, she was so impressed with his accomplishments in animation that she offered him the opportunity to adapt the story for the screen.
Selick, who had long wanted to work with Smith, describes his style as "glowing paintings that are just wonderful and filled with lots of mystery and style.
HenrySelick understands this concept well; after all, his own creative inspirations are rooted in the films he produced independently.
HenrySelick (November 30 1952 -), is an American stop motion animation director who directed both The Nightmare Before Christmas, and James and the Giant Peach.
Selick also directed the film Monkeybone and developed the stop-motion animation for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
HENRYSELICK - Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Henry_Selick (174 words)
Layers: A Look at Henry Selick(Site not responding. Last check: )
Selick's 'reward' for his phenomenal effort was to film the adaptation of James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.
Selick's original plan for the film was to shoot James as a live action boy and have him interact with stop motion creations through the entire story.
If there's one thing that you can see from HenrySelick's film career to this point, it's that he remains the most exciting kind of artist because you never know what he will do next, but you do know that it will be imaginative, innovated and nearly perfectly executed.
In an exclusive interview with the Latino Review, HenrySelick, animator, writer, and director, gave us the dish on his latest project, "Coraline," which is based on the popular Neil Gaiman children's book.
Selick, who also directed "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach," will serve as "Coraline's" writer and director.
Later, in a larger press conference to the media, Selick spoke some more about "Coraline," revealing that the film's tone will not be quite as dark as the book's.
Born in Glenridge, New Jersey and raised in nearby Rumson, HenrySelick began drawing by age three and attracted lots of attention with his early efforts.
In high school, Selick turned his creative energies towards music and became a member of a rock n' roll band.
Selick and his wife Heather live in Tiburon, California with their son.
HenrySelick: Yeahâ”so first we built lots and lots of drawings, then I did work with another illustrator to do another photographically real final imagesâ”including the sharkâ”and then we sculpt a small one.
HenrySelick: They've done a lot of work the last couple of years for TV and so forth.
www.movieweb.com /news/76/6276.php (2199 words)
Animation Magazine | Henry Selick Dives in The Life Aquatic(Site not responding. Last check: )
As we reported earlier this week, directorHenrySelick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone) has been brought on to produce stop-motion effects sequences for the upcoming feature The Life Aquatic from filmmaker Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums).
HenrySelick: Most of the sea life that youll see we will create in stop-motion animation.
Selick and crew will begin shooting animation for The Life Aquatic next week and plan to have it completed by April.
Fans of stop-motion animation will be thrilled to hear that HenrySelick (THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS) has a full slate of projects planned for the near future.
Selick is currently directing an adaptation of the children’s novel THE WALL AND THE WING as well as a CG-animated short film entitled MOONGIRL.
You may be surprised to hear that this icon of stop-motion is embracing computer animation, but Selick promises that he is going to do something groundbreaking.
Henry Selick - Walker Books(Site not responding. Last check: )
HenrySelick is the director of such acclaimed animated feature films as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.
Selick started studying animation at CalArts near Los Angeles and his classmates included the celebrated animation directors Brad Bird, John Lassiter, and John Musker.
Selick left Disney to become a sequence director on the animated cult favourite, Twice Upon a Time, which George Lucas produced.
If Selick isn't a household name, it may be because he suffered the indignity of being perhaps the only director in history to make a film that had another director's name in its title.
Her father, who'd died in 1990 at age 74, had been unhappy with previous adaptations of his books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Witches and had held on to the rights to Peach.
Lucy suggested to her mother, Felicity, that Selick might be the one director who could realize Dahl's merrily macabre vision of an English orphan who attempts to escape his wicked aunts and finds a family of creepy-crawly friends inside a magic piece of fruit.
HenrySelick (I) Now Playing Movie/TV News My Movies DVD New Releases IMDbTV Message Boards Showtimes and Tickets IMDbPro IMDb Resume
HenrySelick (I) has 1 in-development credit available on IMDbPro.com.
The Watcher in the Woods (1980) (alien designer) (as C. HenrySelick)
www.imdb.com /name/nm0783139 (321 words)
Henry Selick Biography :: Hollywood.com(Site not responding. Last check: )
Selick left Disney and Burbank for northern California where he founded his own production company, Selick Projects.
MTV sponsored Selick's most ambitious project up to that time--"Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions" (1990), a surreal six-minute short combining stop-motion and live action.
Selick also directed the film's extensive live-action prologue.
Acclaimed animation director joins Vinton Studios - Portland Business Journal:(Site not responding. Last check: )
Vinton said Selick will play a key role as the animation studio launches an aggressive move into feature film development and production.
Selick joined Vinton Studios on May 17 and will immediately direct the studio's first high-budget computer-generated short film titled "Moongirl" while also developing feature projects.
Selick has just completed his stint as animation director on the new Wes Anderson feature, "The Life Aquatic," starring Bill Murray.
HenrySelick is definitely one of the most creative minds in Hollywood and as he says he is finally taking charge of his career with his adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline.
Before Tim Burton convinced him to move into features Selick had help create MTV's look with his unique stop motion commercials and he had created his surrealistic short cartoon Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions.
Since then he has adapted Roald Dahl's James and The Giant Peach into stop motion and Monkeybone a mix of live action and stop motion.
The comic duo will lend their vocal talents to HenrySelick'sstop-motion feature 'Coraline'.
Dakota Fanning has already been cast as the voice of the title character, a young girl who is transported to a parallel universe when she steps through a door in her new house.
Based on the Neil Gaiman book, HenrySelick ('The Nightmare Before Christmas') is directing, and he told Screen Daily this about the announcement: 'I'd like to say that casting [French and Saunders] was my idea, but the credit goes to Coraline's creative father, Neil Gaiman.
UGO.com Feature - Interview with HenrySelick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Monkeybone
Since then, he has adapted Roald Dahl's James and The Giant Peach (compare prices) into stop motion, and made Monkeybone (compare prices), a mix of live-action and stop-motion.
Henry has worked on projects as diverse as Pillsbury Doughboy commercials and the stop-motion sea life effects in
It's a great project and, working on it here at LAIKA reminds me of early days at Skellington Productions where Nightmare Before Christmas was made.
Special thanks go to HenrySelick for agreeing to and participating in this interview, his secretary Shelley Midthun, Howard Green at the Disney Studios for facilitating the interview, and fellow Animated News staffers Mickey and Ben for helping to bring the final product to completion.