# Jack Skellington had hundreds of heads. Not one of them could move.

- Series: [How It's Clipped](https://miu.fm/howitsclipped.md)
- Published: 2026-11-01
- Page: https://miu.fm/howitsclipped/jack-skellington-had-hundreds-of-heads-not-one-of-them-could

## Story

Jack Skellington had hundreds of heads. Not one of them could move.

In The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Jack's skull never bends. Director Henry Selick chose replacement heads: story artist Jorgen Klubien drew every mouth and expression Jack might need, sculptors Shelley Daniels and Randy Dutra sculpted them in clay, and each was cast in resin and painted by hand. Selick counts "300 distinct expressions", plus in-betweens and copies "so multiple scenes could be shot at once". For each frame the animator sets on the head whose mouth makes the sound, then takes one picture. The movement never happens on the set. It happens in your head, at 24 frozen faces a second.

Our pumpkin did it all along: every face in this film is one of 16 carved heads, rendered once by our own code and swapped between frames, never bent. Our own stage, pumpkins and ghost; no frames or characters from the film.

Which face would you carve?

Sources: Henry Selick to Adam J. Yeend, A.frame (the Academy), October 2023; Dave Bossert, "The Nightmare Before Christmas: Puppet Fabrication", Cartoon Research, October 2020 (from his Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas Visual Companion); Ian Failes, Cartoon Brew, September 2018.
Sounds: our own, made in code (earshot, CC0).

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