By Nicole Breskin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
SOHO – What’s blue with big eyes, barely over a foot tall, truly dead, and has already starred in a major motion picture?
It’s the animated Corpse Bride puppet from from Tim Burton’s movie of the same name.
You can see her now at Animazing Gallery in SoHo, where an exhibition called “The Art of Stop-Motion” is on display. The exhibition pays homage to Burton’s method for creating eccentric animated feature films. Known as stop motion, the process involves taking a series of still frames and weaving them together to create animation.
More than 70 artworks and 12 props are on display from Burton's films "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Corpse Bride."
The exhibition’s art is also up for sale, ranging from a clay model of a beetle from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (selling for $650) to the original Corpse Bride and a mini-stage set carrying the top price tag: $95,000. Other puppets are cheaper, but are priced at more than $35,000.
“These are the actors,” says Heide Leigh, the gallery owner, pointing to the puppets. “They are the stars.”
Leigh explains the figurines are bendable robots underneath their outside clothes.
“They’re exactly like the Terminator at the end of the movie, except smaller,” she says.
Leigh, 51, has been collecting works by Burton for nearly 15 years.
“I love his macabre edge,” Leigh says. “His artwork is so creative, whimsical and sophisticated.”
For the show, Leigh collected work from Warner Brothers, Sotheby's, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" director Henry Selick, and legendary animator Joe Ranft.
A Tim Burton retrospective opened on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, running until April 26, 2010. None of the art showing there is for sale.
“The Art of Stop-Motion” is on display until Dec. 12.
