In 1989, author Neil Gaiman wrote a short story called Nicholas Was”¦ for his Christmas card, which contained calligraphy by Gaiman’s frequent collaborator artist Dave McKean.

Now, Vimeo user nomsa has made a pop-up book out of the 100-word story and set it to music on a video, which you can watch here below.

As Christmas draws near, plenty of holiday-related goodies are making their way around.

Today we have for you a brief but very cool little video from the talented folks over at 39 Degrees North, a motion graphics studio from Beijing. The short is a video Christmas card adaptation of the Neil Gaiman poem, Nicholas Was…, and it mixes his dark words with equally dark yet truly beautiful animations.

You can see the video by clicking on over to the other side, and we highly recommend you do just that if you love Mr. Gaiman and fantastic animation work.