When I was a teenager, my dad watched my films and told me I could go to art college and study animation. He made me see that I could do this for a living.

My father, an architectural photographer, was an incurable tinkerer, maker and mender.

With some CGI, I think the brain slightly perceives that things aren't real. There's no gravity, the light's not quite real, the shadows aren't quite real.

Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.

I have to admit to not being the greatest technician, but stop motion animation gives me licence to create machines that wouldn't otherwise be possible - inventions that seem real and actually work.

There is something about the Australian psyche that seems to like films that are slightly offbeat.

I always considered Ray Harryhausen's work so fine that it was way out of my league: in terms of realism and naturalism, in terms of animal movement.