At the end of the article, AWN has a Behind-the-scenes Corse Bride image gallery from 3 Mills Studios in London.

Mike Johnson’s living proof that an out-of-work puppet pusher surviving on credit cards and fading hope can suddenly find himself playing ball with the Big Boys. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

I’ve been asked to answer some questions regarding my experience co-directing Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride:

• What’s it like working with Tim Burton?

• How did I get involved in this project?

• What were the highlights, favorite scenes and greatest challenges of the production?

It would be impossible to squeeze into this article more than a small representation of the three solid years that were required to complete the journey, so I won’t talk about the actors, scripts, storyboards, cameras or sets. Instead, I’ll limit my focus to the animation process: the topic I suppose is of primary interest to AWN readers.

So: How does an out-of-work puppet pusher surviving on credit cards and fading hope suddenly find himself playing ball with the Big Boys?

Well, luck had a lot to do with it, I guess…

I’d been working the stop-mo racket for 12 long years, chasing the gigs from town to town like a migrant farmer chasing after a distant harvest. And times were hard. There just wasn’t much stop-mo work out there anymore, and most of my old buddies had disappeared, or played it smart and gone into computers.

But the puppet game was the only game I knew, and I was holding on to the hope that in the dawn of the 21st century, my puppet skills could still somehow pay the bills.

That’s how I found myself standing in a dark school gymnasium, desperately wiggling a papier-mâché marionette of César Chávez in front of a small group of bored, slightly confused 10-year-olds, when, suddenly, much to the relief of everyone present, my cell phone rang.

“Tim Burton wants to talk to you.” And just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder…

Three days later, still believing myself to be the victim of an elaborate practical joke, I cautiously roll past the guard-booth at the Old Culver lot, on my way to meet with Tim Burton to discuss the possibility of co-directing Corpse Bride.

Johnson’s first meeting with Tim Burton (above) was nerve-wracking. Corpse Bride had become the Bigfoot of the stop-motion world and the project was shrouded in mystery. Photo by Derek Frey.

It wasn’t the first time I heard of the project. Over the years Corpse Bride has become the Bigfoot of the stop-motion world. Mysterious reports would surface from time to time. Rumors of sketches glimpsed in shadowy back rooms, blurry photos of a puppet prototype seen briefly on the Internet, whispers of a CGI test done after-hours at ILM…

Truth or fiction? I was about to find out. A short while later and I’m face to face with the Man himself. Tim Burton, all crazy hair and sunglasses, dressed head to toe in rumpled, rock-star black. He’s on a short break from the production of Big Fish and paces the room radiating high-octane creative juices and exhaustion at the same time, like Amadeus with a hangover.

From what I’ve heard, Tim’s decisions are instinctual. He goes by vibes, not words. Which is good, because being in shock, I don’t have much to say. I can only hope my vibe is talking his language.

In preparation for the meeting, I had written up a few pages of notes based on what little I knew of the Corpse Bride, and Tim pauses for a moment to read them, head nodding slightly.

I know I’m on second base when he opens his sketchbook and shows me the fabled drawings of the Corpse Bride rising from the grave, a band of skeleton musicians, cheerful decapitated heads, smiling blue zombies, thick-lipped maggots and spindly spiders. He’s been thinking about this for a long time. Ten years or more, and now, it seems, the pieces were falling into place. All he needs is someone to help drag it out of his head and into the light.