Animation requires a great deal of concentration, and I preferred to work alone because then I'm not deterred by somebody asking me if I want coffee, or the phone ringing or something.

Many people are under the delusion that I'm just a special-effects man, but I've worn many different hats in my day. On every film I've been involved in, I worked with the writer and producer. We really formulated those scripts. We tried to make films that were logical but still had the fantasy feel of it. I enjoy Aardman Animation's films with Wallace and Gromit, but they're obvious puppet films, whereas we tried to disguise it and make our effects characters in the films rather than obvious puppets.

With all the hype that computer graphics has been getting, everybody thinks there's nothing better than CGI, but I do get a lot of fan mail saying they prefer our films to anything with CGI in it. I'm grateful for that, and we made them on tight budgets, so they were considered B-pictures because of that. And, now here we are, and they've outlasted many so-called A-pictures.

Today, they make films where you have to sit for an hour and a half and watch somebody in the process of dying and, for me, that's rather depressing. Films, in the good old days of the golden age of Hollywood, used to want to inspire people and give them uplift. You're paying good money to see a film, and you don't want to leave depressed!

If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.

The whole point of making a film is to tell a story. That seems to be forgotten. Many films today just rely on special effects and they have an explosion every five minutes. Who needs it? It's rather repetitious.

When you put a big budget into a film, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be a better picture, but it does help in creating new images on the screen.