I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.

Growing up, my sisters and I would always talk stories. One of my frustrations was I didn't know anything about cameras. I didn't know how to make a film and I obviously didn't have a special effects budget. I was a kid. So I was learning to draw to get down the stuff that was in my head, that I couldn't afford to actually do.

8 year old young girl came up to me when I went to speak at an elementary school, and she gave me a drawing. It was great and she said "I want to be just like you when I grow up and direct movies". And that just made me choke up. It was so cute, and the reason why she's looking at me is I look like her.

I think we had to push forward to make sure it was different, do something that we had never done before and yet still have the consistency to stay in the same world. This was our chance to do all the things we didn't get a chance to do before. We've been working on these movies [Kung Fu Panda] for twelve years and we have to keep things exciting for us in order for us to devote that many years of our lives to do this.

When people feel safe, they can come up with ideas. It's important to listen to the actor who is there on the stage and living it.

A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right - that's something you can't rush.

I don't think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I've had female students say to me afterwards, "I never envisioned myself being a director, since I've never seen women do it." But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we'll see more female directors.