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Charle Henry Selick (ˈsɛlɪk, born November 30, 1952), is an American stop motion director, producer and writer who is best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Coraline and Wendell & Wild. He studied at the Program in Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts, under the guidance of Jules Engel.
Early Life[]
Selick was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey to Melanie (née Molan) and Charles H. Selick[1], and raised in Rumson[2]. Selick did little but draw from ages 3 to 12. Selick's fascination with animation came at a young age, when he first saw both Lotte Reiniger's stop-motion movie The Adventures Of Prince Achmed, and the animated creatures of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad by Ray Harryhausen.
After studying science at Rutgers University and art at Syracuse University and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, Selick eventually enrolled at CalArts to study animation. While a student at CalArts, his two student films, Phases and Tube Tales, were nominated for Student Academy Awards[3].
Laika Work[]
Moongirl[]
After developing stop-motion animation on Wes Anderson's feature The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Selick joined the Portland, Oregon-based animation studio LAIKA in mid-2004 as supervising director for feature film development. After joining LAIKA, Selick directed his first computer-generated animation film, the award-winning 2005 short film Moongirl, the inspiration for Candlewick Press's children's book of the same name.
Coraline[]
Selick's first and only LAIKA feature to date is 2009's Coraline, based on the book of the same name by acclaimed author Neil Gaiman. It is the first stereoscopic stop-motion animated movie. The film has received generally positive reviews from critics. Coraline was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe; all for Best Animated Feature.
Style and Creative Temperament[]
Joe Ranft, Selick's friend and sometime collaborator, once stated in that Selick had a "rock 'n' roll-meets-Da Vinci temperament[4]." In Ranft's words "He'll still go off to his office to play guitar or electric piano to ease off and think," but at the same time Selick operates scientifically. "He gets an outrageous premise—something that comes from a real dream place—then approaches the aesthetics of it like a mechanical engineer: What can we build on this foundation, how do we buttress it? If we have a mechanical shark, how does it kill? Will it shoot things from its snout?" Ranft said Selick has an uncanny gift: "He can articulate things through animation that people couldn't say otherwise."
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References[]
- ↑ "CHARLES H. SELICK, 80, of RUMSON", Asbury Park Press, May 4, 2006.
- ↑ Beckerman, Jim. "A Fuzzy Nightmare, Brought To Screen", The Record, April 7, 1996.
- ↑ "Henry Selick biography", Tribute. Retrieved on July 26, 2019.
- ↑ Sragow, Michael. ""Toy" story man", Salon, November 23, 1999.