How The Nightmare Before Christmas Revolutionized Animated Films

20 years after its release, Tim Burton's masterpiece still exerts an influence on stop-motion animators

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Today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Tim Burton’s animated musical-fantasy masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton’s partnership with Nightmare director Henry Selick was a milestone in the long tradition of stop-motion animation — the painstaking process of creating film magic one frame at a time — and had an enormous influence on many animated movies that followed.

Click here for a full list of TIME’s favorite stop-motion feature films. 

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Tim Burton’s animated musical-fantasy masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton’s partnership with Nightmare director Henry Selick was a milestone in the long tradition of stop-motion animation — the painstaking process of creating film magic one frame at a time — and had an enormous influence on many animated movies that followed.

Click here for a full list of TIME’s favorite stop-motion feature films.