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.

The shows are either 11 or 22 minutes and they move pretty quickly, and that's part of the charm of them - so it was just trying to keep that in mind and keep the energy of the story moving, even though we were dealing with a longer format.

There's a lot you can do without words.

I've been drawing since I was about 3 and I come from a family of artists.

I'm a geeky toy collector, and to have toys of your own characters is unbelievably cool.

I'm hoping that word-of-mouth on the film - people seeing it and liking it - that that will drive more people to the theaters, because I haven't seen the billboards or the posters or anything.

But to me what seems to be missing in a lot of portfolios is Cartooning.