Tim Burton is a film director, producer, artists, writer and animator and is well known for his dark and gothic style of work on films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride. He works has a very distinctive look and his signature look is for his characters to have very large rounded eyes. In his early years of his career Tim Burton worked on fox and the hound and was fired by Disney for not being able to draw in the Disney style so he then started creating his own work in his own unique gothic style.
“I’ve always loved people with expressive eyes. I like people that can express things without speaking. It’s like old silent movie stars. There’s something that’s quite beautiful about just looking into people’s eyes.”
This is an example of one of his characters from Corpse Bride. The unusual thing about this character is that even though she’s meant to be dead her skin is still a vibrant blue and she makes the other characters look dull. There is the strong contrast in the colour of skin or the bride and the other characters to illustrate the difference between the dead and living. The bright blue makes the film playfully dark which makes it appropriate for children.
Burton is well known for enhancing features of his characters to make them look unusual. With this character he has given her his signature large round eyes with small pupils and long eyelashes. She also has very large plump lips that are contrasted with the very petite nose. Also the head is very large compared to the next and makes it looks unbalanced but the large features on the face makes the head look so small due to the small amount of white space left. He creates his characters for films such as Corpse bride by using hand made models and moving it slightly to create each frame.
This is my favourite Tim Burton character; Jack the Skellington from a Nightmare Before Christmas. This character stands out a lot because of its extreme body composition as it is so tall but so thin and has extremely long limbs almost like a spider’s leg. The interesting part of this character is that even though it is a skull and has no eyeballs it still has very expressive eyes ad sticks to Burton’s distinctive look. I think its clever how he managed to still show the character’s mood with such minimal number of items on its face. I like how the character is very human like even with its clothes being like tuxedo and trousers. By having the character human like it makes it easy to relate to the character.
Edward Scissorhands is one of Tim Burton’s most well-known characters and the idea for the character came from a drawing that he had made in high school. The character is a very lonely character that is representing someone being misunderstood and it shows this through the sorrowful, dark sunken eyes and the stance of the character. Tim Burton understands that monsters aren’t just viscous creatures but explores the humanity side of it.
This drawing looks very rushed and created without much thought but just created to represent his mood at the time. The character’s arms and legs are very thin and fragile which is contrasted by its broad shoulders. The hands are very thin and long and like garden tools than scissors which is used to emphasize the importance of them to the character. The high contrast of black and white around the eyes make them look more isolated in the dark and scared. The clothing on the character represents a bit of his character as well as his clothes are all ripped and messy showing the complications to having scissors for hands and reveals a bit of a story.This character is aimed at an older target audience which is shown through the lack of colour and the gothic imagery.
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