Tim Burton: The UPA Connection

The important thing to remember about Tim Burton is that he is a student of film as well as a director. Add to this the fact that he started his career as an animator and you go a long ways in understanding his film references.

Yesterday my son, Tobias, ask me to screen Tim Burton`s Vincent. I have it on the Chiodo Bros. demo reel and it is one of my favorites.

Vincent is autobiographical in nature, a tale of a little boy who sees the world through the haze of his love of monster movies and tales of horror.

Burton makes his visual references clear from the beginning. His tortured hero is named Vincent McCloy. He shares a last name with UPA`s own Oscar winning tortured child hero, Gerald McBoing Boing.

Visually Vincent owes its striking look to UPA`s The Tell-Tale Heart. Both films are narrated; Vincent by Vincent Price and Heart by James Mason. But it is the darkness, mood, and checked imagery that marks Vincent as an homage` to UPA`s horror masterpiece.

Below are a group of screen captures from these two classic animations. Still images can not capture the true similarity in mood between these two great animated films but it can show the use of the checkered pattern as a visual tool in both works.





The Tell-Tale Heart is available on the Hellboy 2 disk DVD. And Vincent is available on the Special Edition DVD of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas as an extra features or you can make friends with the Chiodo Bros.

Tomorrow: Part 4 (the last installment) of Music for Animation.

If you want to check out a fan site for Vincent here is the top search engine pick at Google http://vincent.madonna-online.ch/