What we were in on, really, was the invention of animation.
In video games and animation, you find that the toughest things to make different are the things that aren't words: grunts, groans, gasps.
Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one.
One of the things I learned in animation is that you never, ever want to start doing a voice that you can't sustain for four straight hours.
I made tons of films. I did animation for my friends' films. I animated scenes just for the fun of it. Most of my stuff was bad, but I had fun, and I tried everything I knew to get better.
My work is so unorthodox that from one panel to the next, the drawings are completely different... totally opposed to the way of working in something like animation, where every drawing has to look like the one before.
I think of Ray Harryhausen's work - I knew his name before I knew any actor or director's names. His films had an impact on me very early on, probably even more than Disney. I think that's what made me interested in animation: His work.
I'll do anything that sparks me. Sometimes I'll want to do something random with ballet, and then I'll want to be a hippie caterpillar in an animation film. Who knows what will come my way, but I'm going to try and put little hints into the universe, and hopefully they'll float on by.
Studios have been trying to get rid of the actor for a long time and now they can do it. They got animation. NO more actor, although for now they still have to borrow a voice or two. Anyway, I find it abhorrent.
When business executives are making the artistic decisions and don't understand animation, things can go awry.
I was influenced by Ray Harryhausen and Lotte Reiniger, with her twitchy, cutout animation, which I happened to see at a very young age, but also by the Warner Bros. cartoons, 'Tom and Jerry,' and of course Disney. And also by Fellini's 'Giulietta of the Spirits' and Kurosawa's 'Ran.' And by other American illustrators and painters.
I have more faith in doing something creative for a cable station or something like Yahoo or Google or Amazon. What Netflix did with 'House of Cards' and David Fincher was brilliant. That is inspiring to me. I think there is more chance for creativity in animation, it just hasn't happened there yet.
The thing with computer-generated imagery is that it's an incredibly powerful tool for making better visual effects. But I believe in an absolute difference between animation and photography.
Motion comics are just cheap animation. Very cheap animation. And I like animation almost as much as I like comics, but I'm not rushing to pay out for a cheap hybrid of the two.
Steve Carell is good. I like him. Who else? Here's another depressing thing: animation has kind of taken over, too. You know, 'Family Guy?' I watch that because the guy is good.
A lot of people have helped me along the way. But you know the biggest thing for me was when computer animation came along.
I've always loved movies and animation. When I was little, I was always pretending to be some alter ego superhero. For years it was Ultraman, ninjas, Spiderman and other cool super heroes.
You've got to be able to make animation for much less... Less is not the studio's way.
I thought that if I could speed up the production of animation, I could make a big business out of recreating the amazing images of the news because what we get on TV is always the last bit of image.
You don't have a face to work with, so your voice has to do all the work until you see the animation. So, a lot of it I had to pull back because it was too big.
I prefer that animation reach into places where live action doesn't go, and it seems like all of animation nowadays is trying to go where live action is.
Yes, actually. Animation's a very easy thing to watch on tour.
The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again.
Where as in animation you have to kind of do a series of drawings in between to complete the movement.
My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.
The walls between live-action and animation are becoming really porous, and it's interesting.
The movies I like watching the most are these sort of cinema verite, handheld films where you really get gritty with people. But I also have this strange affinity for old Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies and things that sort of pop out where you see the frames, where you have these 2D animation moments and split-screens and things like that.
I've loved all forms of animation.
Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.
In animation, there's this exhilarating moment of discovery when you see the film and you say, Oh THAT'S what I was doing.
'Ice Age 4' came totally out of nowhere for me. I was told Fox Animation was interested in hiring me as a story supervisor or something or other that sounded way too professional for me.
Well, for one thing, the executives in charge at Cartoon Network are cartoon fans. I mean, these are people who grew up loving animation and loving cartoons, and the only difference between them and me is they don't know how to draw.
One reason for keeping Disney animation separate from Pixar was that by solving their own problems when they finished a film, Disney could say, 'Nobody bailed us out; we did it.' And it's a very important social thing for them to do that.
If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.
A lot of our animation projects are co-productions with French production companies.
Depression is melancholy minus its charms - the animation, the fits.
