Quotes About Animation

I'm the biggest fan of animation. I love the history of animation, I know it well.

Even when I'm writing animation, I think of them as real people. I think of them as completely three-dimensional beings, even if it's a talking teapot. I don't think of them as one-dimensional drawn characters running around. Maybe that's why, to me, there's really no difference in writing the two - animation versus live action.

I hate when people go on TV and tell you how hard it is to do animation. No, no, no. UPS is hard work. I’ve done some animation and here's how easy it is. The easiest job in the world. I go in a booth and I go, what’s the line? And the guy goes, it’s time to go to the store. And then I go, it’s time to go to the store. And then they gave me $1 million.

I learned a lot about 3D animation from and with my dear friend Michael Hemschoot of Workerstudio. Taught me that I want to play more with animation and image manipulation. Fun stuff!

I do have more directorial control over animation, because it's like trial and error: If something doesn't work, you can always go back and change certain things. Whereas in live action, every day is a challenge, and you have to make decisions on an hourly basis. So in live action I have more freedom as a director, but in animation, I have more control over the final product.

Japanese animation tends to need high budgets. If I have a high budget for a movie, I usually make animation, but if the project has a low budget, then I would ask the producer to consider live action.

If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.

In animation, there's silly things I get to do with my voice. I get to have a wider range, so my voice gets to dance more than it does on camera.

If you make the wrong decision, you make the wrong decision. That's all there is to it. There are few guarantees in life. One of them is that you will make lots of mistakes The worst thing you can do is wimp out and spend your life in suspended animation refusing to make a choice because it may not be a perfect one.

It used to be trained professionals doing animation and they were great. Now they have celebrities and famous actors doing the voices, but that does not always work. But I think this film turned out really well, partly because the three of us (me, Ray and Denis) are comedians who are used to doing solo acts and doing certain types of voices. The three of us are New York guys, we all came up the same way in the profession and we are all edgy and enjoy doing family movies. It was a good combination I think.

The amazing fact that one person can make his own film - I think animation is somewhat unique in that respect. I don't need to deal with lawyers. I don't need to deal with corporations. I don't need to deal with executives or agents or any of that. I can just sit at home and make a feature film. That's a wonderful experience. Each film I make gets more popular, more press and makes more money. So it's amazing that I've survived and actually prospered doing that sort of homegrown, cottage-industry filmmaking.

The biggest problem in countries that don't have a tradition in animation or a film industry, is that precisely, that it's not an industrial activity as it is in Hollywood where there are clear production procedures. Because of this we all become snipers making our films any way we can and crossing our fingers to get distribution so people can see them.

Learn how to draw. It's the basis of what we [animation directors] do. Keep a sketchbook. Try making a very simple little film. Try and tell a story clearly and entertainingly. Study the way people move and animate move. Observe all you can, and try and capture that simply in a few lines on paper.

Video game engines can handle the kind of complexity and realism you can't put into a movie - yet. But games are getting better and better - I imagine a day where you won't be able to tell a game from a movie, with great A.I. animation and photoreal, interactive environments, etc.

Luckily with animation, they give you a lot more leeway than a live-action show.

Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.

I brought in the stories many times. I don't just do animation.

I've been fascinated with gargoyles since I was a kid. I took a high school trip to Europe, the 8 countries in 5 weeks kind of trip. Even then I collected postcards of gargoyles. Then I sort of forgot about it. You flash-forward a few years and I'm at Disney, we're looking for an idea to base a show on. I was running series development at the time at Disney TV Animation. And we came up with the Gargoyles comedy series. Which didn't sell!

What happens in animation is that you don't really start the story until you're boarding it, which usually means that you've gotta go through some sort of a script phase. And you can get caught in the doldrums there, overdeveloping that, when you don't really know what you have until you put it up in storyboards.

I could see how people get addicted to animation, and I understand why it's so great for comedy. You can do whatever you want and it just happens.

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

I'm interested in animation. I actually feel like I've learned so much about the process how to make an animated movie.

Toward the end of the film ['Life, Animated'] we see 'The Sidekicks Story,' and that is a story that Owen drew himself. We took that style, which is decidedly different from Disney animation, and used it as a basis. It's a 'two-dimensional' hand drawn animated form, so I went to this company in Paris called 'Mac Guff,' and they assembled an amazing group of young animators, and brought it to life.

No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.

The largely objective character of beauty is further indicated by the fact that to a considerable extent beauty is the expression of health. A well and harmoniously developed body, tense muscles, an elastic and finely toned skin, bright eyes, grace and animation of carriage- all these things which are essential to beauty are the conditions of health.

Animation is not just for children - it's also for adults who take drugs.

The film [Boy and the World]gave me the possibility to create a new language. Animation is a very rich medium but hasn't fully been exploited by artists. Often artists are trapped by words.

When you're dealing with clay animation, people forget that every single set is built to scale and by hand.

Animation did not become the dominant form of children's television until the '60s.

What I love most about animation is, it's a team sport, and everything we do is about pure imagination.

I feel like there's a lot of experience I have from doing TV animation that would be especially useful doing an animated film in terms of some efficiencies of the process that are necessary for TV, just because you have to crank out material every week, that could be applied to film.

Animation is the one type of movie that really does play for the entire audience. Our challenge is to make stories that connect for kids and adults.

I'm involved with every single thing that they do as far as just being aware, and then they ask my opinion. I'm involved in the sequence reviews and some of the animation reviews and character designs and things like that. I give my input on that movie as well.

Yes, actually. Animation's a very easy thing to watch on tour.

I like the idea of seeing a film that has the artist's hand in there,a film where you can see his strokes, you can see his working patterns. It's like going to a museum and seeing a Renoir drawing. You want to see their work and you want to see how they put it together. For me to see that in animation is really fresh, it's really exciting, it's really original.

What's most important in animation is the emotions and the ideas being portrayed. I'm a great believer of energy and emotion.

In terms of writing characters or stories, at least initially, there's no difference between live-action and animation. A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.

Here's my take, for what it's worth: I think that a lot of people in the US, as well as other countries, have the idea that animation is primarily for children, and kids like to be entertained! And animated films here tend to have crazy fantastic situations that would be difficult to do in live action, like with talking animals or monsters or whatnot, and that lends itself well to comedy, I think.

The industry in Japan moving toward CGI is not as severe and extreme as in the U.S. The animation industry in the U.S. is firing 2D animators and closing those studios, but I think it's possibly because the national traits of the U.S. prefer super-realism. Since Japan is a country that prefers plane vision, I don't think we will leave 2D and substitute hand-drawing with CGI entirely.