1996

Mad genius Henry Selick hired me as Conceptual Designer on his stop-motion feature based on Roald Dahl’s book, James and the Giant Peach. Already a huge fan of stop motion animation—Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Trnka, the Bros Quay, Karel Zeman, Yuri Norstein, all big influences on my work—it was an amazing experience designing puppet bugs for a couple of years. While working on the film I became friendly with the Dahl family and Roald’s widow, Liccy, asked if I would reillustrate the original novel. Yes. Then Disney released my production art in a picture book format with text by one of the screenwriters, Karey Kirkpatrick, and with graphic design by Molly Leach.

—Lane

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Henry’s inventive film holds a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes