There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them.

I just devoured all of his [Buster Keaton’s] films because his sense of comic timing was amazing. He’s the closest a human being has ever come to a cartoon character. And I was just amazed at his sense of character and timing, the humor. It's all just so…sophisticated, even when you watch it today.

I quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second.

Every technology that comes into filmmaking is first a gimmick. Think about sound with 'The Jazz Singer' or the first colour or surround sound - it takes a while for filmmakers to understand how to use it.

A gem of a short film has a sense of pure joy in animation that is different from anything you see in a feature film.

My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts

One of the big technical advances that's really great looking is the water.