Duke Johnson Quotes

In classical oil painting, there seemed to be a radical turn to seeing things as the camera sees them, with that technological modification. I began to have a tremendous problem with all of this.

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.

Historically, stop-motion animation has had a jerky-jerky quality, which is a constant reminder to audiences that they're looking at artificial objects. It creates a barrier between the audience having an emotional experience and what they're looking at. We're working hard to get past that.

This new generation of animators was trained in CG. They know all the fundamentals of any 2D animator, but a lot of them learned on these CG rigs. You give them a good rig, and they can make that thing sing.

Realism and Naturalism rely mostly on the eye of the flesh. Abstract, conceptual and surrealistic art rely mostly on the eye of the mind. Great works of art rely on the eye of contemplation, the eye of the spirit.

Well, I'm always drawn to the drama first. A story is really only interesting to me, if you can remove all of the genre moments and remove the supernatural element, and it still works. Then, I'm interested.

A close friend of mine described me as a radical pragmatist. I embrace this no-nonsense distinction wholeheartedly. It is a character trait that matches the sense of myself I've had from as far back as I can remember. I am not one who goes in much for magical thinking. I don't believe in destiny, fate, or things like divine guidance, either.

I'm not interested in putting naturalism on stage - I want passion.

I do enjoy a bit of the fantasy world that anime provides, but at the same time, I need the reality in it. I'm very much a stickler about the actual animation. I'm not into the cutesy, stereotypical animation with big eyes and a small chin. That annoys the hell out of me.

Since 'The Office,' everyone has this idea that comedy is only good if it reflects the way people really speak. But that's nonsense - and it's a problem unique to comedy.

I want more unpredictability. I want more realism. I think the fans would appreciate that, and that's what I've brought since day one.

I don't watch films that are too unreal.

I like to keep my films close to reality.

Over-articulation kills the character because it becomes one thing and that is not how it happens in life and it is not beautiful to watch on screen either.

People are surprised when Hollywood characters act the way a real person would.

I'm not asking actors to act. I'm asking them to behave. I want to see their being, not how they can fake it.

The CGI landscape is another world. It has its own physical laws; it can defy gravity. But surely the wonder of cinematic space is that it is wedded to reality?

You have to do what the story demands, but inside of those constraints, I try to inject as much realistic physics as I'm allowed to.

Most acting is very melodramatic. It's not what you see in people.

I like movies where everything is dealt naturally and with a sense of realism.

Everyone says comedy is really hard, but with 'The Office' the naturalism was everything so it didn't feel like doing comedy; it just felt like doing a really offensive character who thought he was funny.

'Slice of life' is not a genre I had experimented with much, and it's quite difficult.

I just think action films now have... often, because you can do anything with CGI, people do. And I don't think you necessarily should. You lose that sort of human dimension, and you get all the stuff breaking the laws of physics.

I love David Bohm. I started to get into speculative realism because I started reading his work.

I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.