If you are offered the opportunity to do something that you don’t know how to do – say yes, dive in and do it anyway.

Believe in the character; animate with sincerity

For me, drawing is the greatest joy. Animation is never as good as when I'm sitting at that desk drawing. Even when it's up on the screen, it's never as wonderful as those moments when it's drawn, to me.

There's an image of Rapunzel free, flying in the air, as a sunburst, which says so much. This is a girl who has to get out and bless the world.

There's a weird thing about me and characters with hair, from Ariel or Pocahontas to Tarzan with his dreadlocks and now Rapunzel... it's like I'm trying to make up for some loss in my life, I don't know what that is.

Believe the impossible is possible

Many years after animating Ariel, I continue to draw her, doodling as I talk on the phone, absent-mindedly passing time in a sketchbook. She has become a part of me and yet now belongs to the world and generations to come.