The Simpsons builds its Treehouse of Horror XXXVII opening in practical stop motion

The October 25 Treehouse of Horror XXXVII episode opens with a 20–30 second Nightmare Before Christmas homage made by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios. Animation World Network interviewed studio co-founder John Harvatine IV and co-executive producer Tim Long, while Entertainment Weekly separately premiered and described the completed sequence; both identify it as a bespoke stop-motion opening rather than a conversion of the full 2D episode.

Harvatine says the job took about three months — roughly one month each for pre-production, shooting and post — with 12–15 people on the floor and about 20 including post. The short schedule put resources into the hand-sculpted puppets and poured-resin spare heads, while the sets used cardboard and foam instead of the studio's usual wood and plaster. No character faces were 3D printed.

The opening combines puppet and clay animation without conflating them. Motion-control passes supplied repeatable camera moves and clean plates for rod and rig removal; clay titles and one transformation gag were photographed separately on a glass down-shooter and composited into the practical stage action. The account is unusually specific about what stayed physical and what post-production removed, but it does not identify a public, embeddable official video source, so no Watch entry is being inferred from the press coverage.

Update, 2026-10-27: Tara Bennett's Cartoon Brew follow-up (October 26) adds build detail. Showrunner Matt Selman first floated a Nightmare opening in 2024, after Stoopid Buddy had animated the stop-motion "Denim" segment of an earlier Treehouse; serious planning began only about three months before broadcast. Tim Long supplied the song parody and a rough animatic, which the studio used to plan sets and lighting, and David Silverman worked on-site with the crew. The puppet department built 16 puppets including doubles, with five or six sculptors working in parallel, and every costume was hand-sewn; Harvatine calls puppet fabrication "the longest process of everything." Several puppets were made without tie-downs, so animators were told to "go big, go bold" and put performance ahead of precise foot placement. The worm-lettered title was planned in clay but moulded instead when hand-sculpting every letter proved too much work. The practical lesson, folded into the Wiki's tie-down page, is how a short television schedule changes which puppet features are worth building.