The largest exhibition to ever be presented in ACMI's Gallery 1 has been curated in direct collaboration with Burton and features artworks and objects drawn from his personal archive, as well as studio archives and the private collections.

Also featured are his student and early non-professional films; his long-unseen television adaptation Hansel and Gretel (1983); examples of his work for the flash animation internet series The World of Stainboy (2000); a selection of the artist's oversized Polaroid prints; graphic art and texts for non-film projects, like The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories (1997) and Tim Burton's Tragic Toys for Girls and Boys (2003) collectible figure series; and art from a number of early unrealised projects.

The exhibition follows the course of Burton's career, with childhood ephemera, juvenilia, and amateur short films from his youth in Burbank, California; cartoons and drawings from his time at California Institute of the Arts; and examples of his first professional work at The Walt Disney Studios. Burton's artistic output includes shorts Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984); and 15 feature films including Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Mars Attacks! (1996), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Planet of the Apes (2001), Big Fish (2003), Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd (2007) and Alice in Wonderland (2010); as well as writing and web projects such as Stainboy (2000).