Tim Burton and Henry Selick

I've been on this kick lately... maybe it's all part of the turning 40, mid-life crisis, introspection, figure it out phase of life that I'm nearing... or in the middle of if you ask my therapist.

In any event I've been evaluating admirably the works of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, particularly their stop motion films. These include many of which you might recognise:
"The Nightmare Before Christmas", "James and the Giant Peach", "The Corpse Bride" and most recently "Coraline". "Coraline" is FANTASTIC by the way and if you haven't seen it you don't know what you're missing. It's a little creepy in some spots and is definitely not for very small children, but those same creepy parts are somewhat reminiscent of the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm and while much less politically correct, make for a good tale. No spoilers here :)

I'm just amazed with the method used to create these movies. So much so that I looked around at Laika studios in Oregon to see what kind of jobs they had there, as well as MacKinnon and Saunders over in the UK where they make the puppets. It takes some amazingly talented artists to be able to craft such beautiful works of art, and then the complexity and perfection that must go into production of a stop animation in and of itself is mind boggling.

Tim Burton has an interesting past and there's a book "Burton on Burton" that I'm looking forward to getting from the public library. He's also published a book called "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories" that I want to get and read. I'm on a Halloween creepy story kick too, reading Poe, Edith Wharton and some other things to get me in the mood.

All this to simply say that I feel like I've lost touch with my creative side. I used to do all kinds of things; draw, write music (lots of that) write, fly kites, etc. and I seem to have given much of that up over the years to focus on my career but I'm finding these days that my career just isn't as fulfilling as I want and I need something else to find my 'old self' or 'true self' or maybe just 'self'. Always one to look for inspiration, I think Tim Burton isn't all that bad a place to start. A little strange maybe, but in a way that embraces the differences of an individual. I like that.