For me, some of the happiest moments on a live-action film are the awkward moments. One actor says something to another actor. They didn't expect that performance from that actor; that affects their return performance.

Everyone always wants to find the answer, to feel that things are resolved. But in dreams, maybe there isn't an answer so much.

Honestly, every person, every individual has a process, and my philosophy, whether it's an actor or an animator, is you try to understand the process that person has so you can get the most out of them, but I think you have to sort of manipulate that process with honesty.

Animated films are so precisely engineered - right down to forming lines of dialogue with words pulled from several different takes - how do you translate that spontaneity from the live-action to the digital realm?

I'd like to think that if you find your audience there are still opportunities there to go and tell an original story.

I just watched so many Westerns as a kid that you end up using archetypes and sort of tropes of that genre, because there's a language there and you can twist it and turn it on its head or play to it or go sideways at any time.

My respect for animators and animation directors has gone way, way up and it is just not something you can phone in.