Stephen Hillenburg Quotes

I wrote on a show called Johnny Bravo when I was at Hanna-Barbera.

I think with animation there's a certain freedom that you're given. You don't have a thought at the back of your mind, that worry that you'll have to cut and go back to the top of the scene. You're not working with anyone else from the cast. It's just you.

When 'Family Guy' started, we wanted to make it more like a sitcom. And there was very little music.

Animation scripts tend to be much more descriptive and are lighter on dialogue.

I remember on 'Dr. Katz,' there was no script really at all. There were just scene outlines.

I never wanted to do a regular sitcom, because I'd be incredibly bored doing the same character week in, week out. But the beauty of 'The Simpsons' is that it's 15, 16, 17 characters. It's the variety that keeps it interesting. And hey, they're all my children.

Generally, we try not to write down to kids. We really just try to write a visual, character-driven cartoon that has a lot of slapstick and really appeals to us. I guess we are just lucky that other adults find that amusing, too.

I love being able to bring an animator's vision to life and give the breath to the voice of a character.

My very first professional job was a cartoon, doing voices for the Mr. T cartoon in high school.

I love the idea of animation just because it removes the actor from the character, and you can be anything. I've been devouring 'Adventure Time' and 'Archer.' I'd love to get my hands dirty on either of those shows.

And of course Marc Cherry heightens it and makes it hilarious. But there's so many universal themes in the show, and he made it so funny. We knew he was onto something if he could keep it up and, thankfully, he did.

I don't do storyboarding, ever; I'm not interested in that.

Everyone at Junction Point has been inspired by the creative folks at Pixar and Disney Feature Animation to make 'entertainment for everyone.'

One of the things I learned in animation is that you never, ever want to start doing a voice that you can't sustain for four straight hours.

'The Simpsons' is an especially collaborative show.

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.

I write plays and movies, I live and work at the borderline between word and image just as any cartoonist or illustrator does. I'm not a pure writer. I use words as the score for kinetic imagistic representations.

Acting is a plum gig, and then animation is an even more plum gig.

I'm developing more stuff in my voice, more Nick Swardson. It's me as myself in a sense and kind of in my voice, no accent no affectation. I'm growing into my own persona.

Writing is the greatest thing about really good sitcoms.

You can write a script, but that's just a starting point as a cartoonist. The heart of the process comes when you start to draw it, and you work out how to lay the page out, how best to tell the story.

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.

For me, part of the fascination with making animation is you go to a place; it's a complete immersion in someone else's fantasy.

The best way for a beginner to write for animation is to closely watch animated films, then read the screenplays for them afterwards.

I'll come up with an idea for a character, and I'll write some jokes and make sure that that character is going to have some legs to it - that it's really going to work. If I can come up with jokes and material that I think will work, then I make a cheap version of the doll. Achmed started out just being this little plastic toy from the store.