You win the Oscar, you get to go into just about anybody's office for a month. I had a lot of meetings.

I think I probably am doing animation because I started as a kid and I learned on my own, and I worked by myself a lot. It's the only thing I really prepared myself to do in any kind of depth. And I've just kind of imbibed the technology and techniques and the thinking about telling stories this way. It just feels natural to me.

I remember feeling that technology was like trying to draw with your foot. In a ski boot. It was the most indirect way to work imaginable, but the potential had us all excited. I started in stop motion.

Honestly, I don't go out of my way to see animated movies. I'm mostly influenced by.. the films I tend to like are the small films, small personal stories. With characters you can believe.

On these feature films there are people on the staff who can draw 100 times better then I can, and animate better then I can, and light better then I can, write comedy better then I can. I basically am in the middle of kind of a creative typhoon and I'm just kind of talking the film up on to the screen. Minute to minute, meeting by meeting, day by day.

Fox came to us with the concept for ICE AGE and they came to us with the first draft of the script. They also gave us a mandate to make it into a comedy from what was previously a rather dramatic action concept.

We can't worry about competition. Besides, you aren't competing with anyone but yourself. They have nothing to do with whether you make a good movie or not.