John Kricfalusi Quotes

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

The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again.

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.

All these directors, and I would include the Coen brothers and Quentin, have a very unique vision of what they want. They listen to ideas and make people feel like everyone is making the film.

Although filmmaking is collaborative and involves trust, ultimately it is the director who holds the whole picture together in their head.

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

I think 'director' is a very broad term. I like to think of myself as the head collaborator, not the director, because I think, for a lot of people, 'director' connotes giving orders and telling people what to do.

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.

The question I get more than any other is, 'What does it mean to direct an animated film?' And the reality is that it's not a whole lot different from what you do in live action.

As far as doing a TV special, I would have to be in control of it. I'd want my own team of animators to work on it.

I think all directors should be animators.

I'm surprised sometimes at the responsibilities you have as a director.

It's only when you're privy to the conversations and a member of the production team that you can direct the course of a series and make sure it flourishes.

There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.

I think there is more cohesion when you have one director on set.

I wonder if Louis Ferreira would be interested in directing.

I was attracted to Joe right away. He was and is one of the greatest cartoon artists I've ever met. I was able to do the timing, and Joe with his draftsmanship could make the storyboards. There were things I could do that he couldn't and vice versa.

One of the tricky things with animation is, because we spend four years on the movie and everything is done so methodically day by day by day, it can be a struggle to have the finished film feel spontaneous and loose and naturally occurring.

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.

I would say that the energy on set is always the energy of the director because he's the boss.

I would say the most important aspect of direction is that you, as a director, and your producer need to be on the same page, the same line of thinking. If that doesn't happen in the beginning of the film, then that will show in the final product 100 percent.

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.

Film is always a fight because you're the person, as the director, with a clear picture in your head of what you think is really exciting, and you're just trying to convince a bunch of other people to buy into that.

I really enjoy watching animation films and I have always been curious about how such well-established actors in Hollywood lend their voices to animation films.

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