Travis Knight Quotes

In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy.

People, they think that animation is a style. Animation is just a technique. It's like, people, they think that comics is a style, like comics is a superhero story. Comic is just a narration, and is a medium, you can say any kind of story in comics and you can say of any kind of story in animation.

To me any given story has its appropriate form. There might be some story I get involved with that's begging to be a graphic novel, so that will have to be that way.

If I had not been successful as a director, then I'm sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them.

What I can't tell with a photo I will tell with a painting, and what I can't tell with a painting I will tell with a video or text sometimes, et cetera.

I've been obsessed with this kind of visual storytelling for quite a while, and I try to create material that allows me to explore it.

Film is anti-language.

We [with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa] wanted to draw people in with a dialogue - whether it's a creative process or a social issue or innovation of some kind; whether it was how we told the stories or what stories we told. We produced some online videos.

I achieved perfection, my type of perfection - visual storytelling. Storytelling was my style.

If I had not been successful as a director, then I'm sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them. Maybe they would have been less glamorous than films, but I would continue to tell stories.

I think my leap into TV and movies and comics is in a way natural because I'm a visual storyteller. If you look at any one of my short stories or novels, they sort of unscroll cinematically. Every scene is concrete in my mind. I can walk around the room and pick things up. I can describe at length every feature on the character, though I might only supply a glimpse of this on the page. So if I'm writing color into that I'm also writing texture, I'm pushing the image more than anything else.

I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.

It's all about this abstract entity called the story. It's all about the best way to tell the story, and to make a movie about the issues that this story is about. Filmmaking is storytelling, for me.

I'm not interested in collage as the refuge of the composition-ally disabled. I'm interested in collage as (to be honest) an evolution beyond narrative.

Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument.

Film is very much about sitting around and talking about ideas, and that's the stuff that I love, but I haven't experienced that yet in the television that I've done so far. It makes me long for movies again because, creatively, I always have a much more fulfilling experience there.

I love being a part of storytelling, so whether I'm getting to do that on Survivor, or do it through kids' adventure books, or directing a movie, it's all sort of the same: Once Upon a Time...

For me, I'm not a great wordsmith, and so maybe from lack of great dialogue writing, I thought it's easier and better to express a story through visuals.

Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We've been drawing pictures on cave walls for centuries. It's like what they say about the perfect picture book. The art and the text stand alone, but together, they create something even better. Kids who need to can grab onto those graphic elements and find their way into the story.

I reveal myself in my movies.

The whole point of making a film is to tell a story.

If you decide to direct a film, it's because you have something to say, something to show to the audience.

Comics are just another medium to express yourself. It's not cinema; it's not literature; it's just something else. It has a specific requirement, which is that images are used to tell the story. There are lots of crappy movies, with guns and action and Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever.

Making movies is an effort is an attempt to leave a trace of your existence.

Some people will say, "Why read a comic book? It stifles the imagination. If you read a novel you imagine what people are like. If you read a comic, it's showing you." The only answer I can give is, "You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?