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I graduated from college with a 3.92 GPA with a degree in computer programming and a BFA in fine arts and animation. My first job was painting a mural in the Grimaldi's in Queens.
I have a confession. I don't enjoy animation. I have no idea why because I absolutely adore doing voiceovers. I think part of me feels that animation has put an actor out of work.
'Snow White' was really hip for its time. Walt Disney was basically using Sigmund Romberg and operetta in the telling of the story, and through animation - that was revolutionary.
Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
The title 'Spirited Away' could refer to what Disney has done on a corporate level to the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic and marvelous new anime fantasy.
I'm always a person that's a little suspicious of anything that's been converted in post, but if I know that it's been originated, either in live-action or animation, I'm intrigued.
The way I formed my studio and how I organize things actually came out of the model of the Japanese animation studio and the manga industry. The manga industry is gigantic in Japan.
Let's get real: the .GIF format is outdated and is not really that great for the modern web anymore. It was created in 1989, and it wasn't even created for the purpose of animation.
I'm really comfortable doing voice-overs, but it's really fun to do animation. Those animation talents are hysterical. They're so good, and they're so amazingly quick on their feet.
When I was in my early 20s, I was quite into Japanese animation. It's like the same thing that I end up always saying which is, imagery based stuff is the thing that really gets me.
In animation, the directors are part of a huge team of animators who all have opinions, too. It's a much more democratic process. Also, the animation executives oversee things more.
If I'm really feeling good and not having a lot of interruptions, I can do a minute of animation a day, so theoretically, I could do a film in three months without any interruptions.
For characters where, in a comic, I'd avoid using screen tone because it's such a bother, I'd deliberately use it in animation in order to highlight their individual characteristics.
One of the big moments of my life was watching 'Star Wars' on its opening weekend in Hollywood. I was watching all these people enjoy this film, and I thought: animation can do this.
When I get up in the morning and put on a pink or a green wig, I see myself as a piece of animation. It lets me be the person I want to be, a person who's not embarrassed to have fun.
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!
Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.
On the 'Tom and Jerry's,' Joe and I would sit across a desk from each other and develop the story. Joe would do the storyboard and I'd do the timing and the direction of the animation.
In all animation, if it's done quickly, you'll know it. And if you're very slow and careful with it, it's going to look a little more beautiful. It's just compressing time into seconds.
'Ice Age 4' came totally out of nowhere for me. I was told Fox Animation was interested in hiring me as a story supervisor or something or other that sounded way too professional for me.
I've always been excited by rotoscoping, the technique used in films like 'Waking Life,' which fuses animation with real-life emotion. It seemed like it was a process ripe for innovation.
My first movie I saw when I was a kid was 'The Jungle Book.' I was 5 years old, and I saw it in a movie theater. Seeing that movie really lit the fuse and ignited my passion for animation.
I've always loved movies and animation. When I was little, I was always pretending to be some alter ego superhero. For years it was Ultraman, ninjas, Spiderman and other cool super heroes.
You're going to get different kinds of animation for different kinds of audiences. Traditionally, adult animation has been for the young male audience. There's no reason why that should be.
It's weird - on almost every film I've worked on, the first sequence we storyboard ends up being the first sequence that goes into animation, and ends up being almost shot-for-shot the same.
In the immortal germ line of human beings - that is, the eggs that sit in the ovaries - they actually sit there in a state of suspended animation for up to 50 years in the life of each woman.
The thing with computer-generated imagery is that it's an incredibly powerful tool for making better visual effects. But I believe in an absolute difference between animation and photography.
If you look at the Disney Villains, I think you'll find that they do have mass appeal in some way, and it usually has to do with a voice quality that also matches very well with the animation.
I used to watch every episode of 'Justice League,' I went to all the movies, I had the Superman lunchbox. I was enamored with animation in general and always wanted to somehow be a part of it.
On a live-action movie, things happen that are unexpected. In animation, you have to fabricate the feeling. That takes a tremendous amount of nuance until the film becomes sentient and gives back.
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.
I have worked in animation on 'King of the Hill.' I've worked in late-night with 'The Daily Show.' I've worked on single-camera stuff, whether it was a movie or television. I have performed onstage.
If I'm doing a voice-over session, like animation or something, and I'm doing three different voices, you've gotta separate them. You've gotta find the different places and do your different things.
I am an animator. I feel like I'm the manager of a animation cinema factory. I am not an executive. I'm rather like a foreman, like the boss of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I work.
Movement and physics: These are the fundamentals of animation. You don't notice that stuff if it's done well, but if fabric or liquid or hair moves weird, your brain is like, 'Wait, that's not real.'
Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
Typically in animation, the characters exist in a kind of stasis. Look at 'The Simpsons' - they never age, the baby never grows up - or 'Peanuts' - the kids never grow up, they always stay the same age.
Books are almost always better than the movies made from them, because there are things books do well and things movies do well, but usually those things don't overlap: the same with comics and animation.
When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.
In terms of animation, animators are actors as well. They are fantastic actors. They have to draw from how they feel emotionally about the beat of a scene that they're working on. They work collaboratively.
In the animation world, people who understand pencils and paper usually aren't computer people, and the computer people usually aren't the artistic people, so they always stand on opposite sides of the line.
Studios have been trying to get rid of the actor for a long time and now they can do it. They got animation. NO more actor, although for now they still have to borrow a voice or two. Anyway, I find it abhorrent.
I took a lot of influences from Studio Ghibli, which is the Japanese animation studio that made 'Spirited Away' and 'Castle in the Sky.' They're like the Japanese version of Disney - but without all the schmaltz.
I'd love to go back to Broadway; I'd love to do animation; I'd love to do hair and make-up campaigns because I love hair and makeup - and, I'd love to do film. I mean, there are a lot of doors I'd love to open up!
When it comes to producing breakthroughs, both technological and artistic, Pixar's track record is unique. In the early 1990s, we were known as the leading technological pioneer in the field of computer animation.
Are we blasphemous in saying that 2-D is largely a thing of the past, and computer-generated animation is the present and future? It's all about creating a better experience for the viewer - and that includes 3-D.
It's always hard when you're working on a project, and you're seeing it in bits and pieces, whether that be film, television, video games, animation - you only really have perspective of what you're interacting with.
My work is so unorthodox that from one panel to the next, the drawings are completely different... totally opposed to the way of working in something like animation, where every drawing has to look like the one before.
We go through, I think, six different drafts of each script. And then my shooting it is roughly, you know, fifteen percent of the total work that gets done on a show. Then it's all post-production animation after that.
The voice for 'Surly' is, of course, very close to my own voice, but it's informed a lot by this story, by the arc and the animation and working with the whole creative team on 'The Nut Job' in finding what really works.