Jeff Smith Quotes

What I do is draw but if you make an animated feature obviously it takes a whole team of people, and Zippy is my work. I felt that turning it over to a team of people would be wrong.

I initially moved to Switzerland for work on an animated feature film, and have been here ever since.

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.

It's a part of most actors to want to be in an animated feature; to extend the legacy of your career.

With my own cartoon, it was just me being goofy by myself, but when it comes to an animated film, you're working with 45 animators and assistant animators. It's a whole different ballgame.

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.

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.

All movies are inherently collaborative, and animation even more so. There are hundreds and hundreds of people involved with an animated movie.

From an animation perspective, it doesn't get better than Pixar. You're working so much in the blind because the huge circle of collaborators that's required to pull off a film like this means that you are just one small arc in that large circle. The level of trust that you have to give into is significant.

I'll just say that America - us included - has a long way to go to catch up with the animated work being done in a handful of countries, namely Japan.

I love Adult Swim. They give you so much artistic freedom.

I'm a true fan of animation, and it's my livelihood.

My animation work is a major source of pride for me.

Gravity Falls' didn't just appear overnight - every spooky cave and moss covered tree was created by a team of brilliant artists.

When I went to California Institute of the Arts, I was classmates with a lot of like-minded weirdoes, some of who have gone on to create other cartoon shows-J.G. Quintel, 'Regular Show;' Pen Ward, 'Adventure Time.' We were all friends in school and pushed each other and made each other laugh.

As I look back on my career, I had a goal, which was to build the first feature computer-animated film.

I'm in the entertainment business, and I make commercially entertaining animated features.

In animation, there's not a medium I believe that's more collaborative. It is a team of people, of different disciplines, coming together. The decisions are made by consensus in many cases. My job as a director is to exercise the best judgement I can in terms of which decision is the best one to make for the movie.

Lissa Treiman is an artist who submitted a guest strip to me back in 2008 and whose work I've followed since. She works in animation. When I first mentioned on Twitter that I was interested in writing a series but not drawing it, she got in touch.

I think Mike and I would absolutely love to do feature animation. Either another story, or it if worked out, one in the 'Avatar' world. We would be really excited.

It's a strange business, and unfortunately, what we do in animation is a mystery, especially the directors.

At the end of the day, filmmaking is a business. You want everyone to make money.

Animation is very much a team effort so you must be a team player.

When you make a film, you will either make money or won't.

In the earliest days of Pixar, when we were making 'Toy Story' and 'A Bug's Life,' we all came together as a group.