Tim Burton Exhibits Artwork at MoMA: One step closer to my Tim Burton hair doll!

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WIRED.com recently ran a Q & A article on their website with my biggest idol, the wonderfully dark, Tim Burton where he discussed his new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  The exhibit is comprised of numerous sketches, paintings, storyboards, props, cartoons, and puppets created by the director himself.  The WIRED article isn’t very long and doesn’t go into great detail, but it’s just enough for those of you who, like me, find yourself cyberstalking Tim Burton.

Wired: Not many directors have retrospectives of their artwork and illustrations. How did having a fine arts background influence your directorial visions?

Burton: The films I grew up loving were very visual. They were the kinds of things that get etched in your memory. To me, film is a very visual thing, so I’m very grateful for my animation background. It’s kind of everything. It’s art, it’s design, it’s film. At that time all I wanted to be was an animator, but through the backdoor you learn how to do everything else. When you make an animated film you have to act it out, design the layouts, shoot it, and edit it. It was a great overall experience.

Wired: What’s your creative process? Do you find yourself doodling and suddenly you’ve got a character for a movie?

Burton: The whole sketching and drawing process to me is the equivalent to how some people write notes. I’ve never really felt like a writer. It was always a visual thing for me. With Jack Skellington, for example, that was just a doodle I kept drawing over and over and over for no apparent reason.

After cookies and cakes, self loathing and my boyfriend, the work(s) of Tim Burton are my absolute favorite thing(s) in the world.  I LOVE everything about his work especially his sense of visual style; the morbid and tragic themes, the gothic landscapes, the both curly and angular characters–the STRIPES!  As a child, I would watch  Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands so many times that eventually my friends and even my parents got so sick of it, they stopped talking to me.  I was that morbid kid at school who dressed in black and grey stripes and idolized the afterlife way before those obnoxious emo kids started cutting themselves to Fallout Boy.  I dream of the day I’m able to work with him one day in whatever capacity that may be.  Short of tattooing black and white stripes on my penis in honor of Mr. Burton (he’s already beaten me to it–don’t ask me how i know that) I can’t think of a more unhealthy way to show my professional obsession with him and his work…I take that back.

I’ve seen an exhibit of Burton’s similar to this before.   It was the The Nightmare Before Christmas exhibit which toured a few years back and trust me, it was completely worth it so I can only assume that MoMA’s exhibit will be ten times better.   Below are a few sketches that Burton did himself for several films/projects he’s done in the past.

You can check out the rest of his sketches here.   In the meantime, I finally found the address for Tim Burton’s production company.  I’ve got my sketch book, an original script, a black wig and knife.  This scenario’s gonna play out one way or another!

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