Bryan Konietzko Quotes

Book 4 is the end of the 'Korra' series. So we've got 52 episodes planned. When all is said and done it will have taken I think about five years to make.

The first day was memorable for me. I walked into this studio with these giant eyes, slowly met everybody and got to see the story boards and sketches of our characters. I got the see the sets and was just amazed that all this was to be something we all were going to be part of for almost a year.

Pixar's short films convinced Disney that if the company could produce memorable characters within five minutes, then the confidence was there in creating a feature film with those abilities in story and character development.

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.

I was totally involved in Bobby's World from the time we started the idea to sitting with the artists on how he would look, to the script meetings, the music, the lyrics, the songs.

On 'Sanjay and Craig,' I've had a number of chances to work with Chris Hardwick, and that is so much fun.

I have more faith in doing something creative for a cable station or something like Yahoo or Google or Amazon. What Netflix did with 'House of Cards' and David Fincher was brilliant. That is inspiring to me. I think there is more chance for creativity in animation, it just hasn't happened there yet.

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.

It's interesting when you're trying to create a character in animation. It's really a communal effort.

I have a studio at my house, and there is a sister studio for Disney which is about 45 minutes away, and we haven't dropped a beat. In the art of animation and voiceover work, you can pretty much work from anywhere.

My job was to give 'The Secret Life of Pets' production team lots of options when it came to Duke. So that's what I always tried to do.

I think one of the reasons for the success of 'Breaking Bad,' and now for 'Better Call Saul,' is that we have been blessed by AMC and Sony with enough time to figure things out.

Our experience on 'Avatar' heavily influenced how we approached 'The Dragon Prince' and how we built our team.

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 eventually thought of SpongeBob, but he needed a last name - SquarePants came to mind.

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

For me, animation is the caricature of life. It's something that we create, from the ground up.

Years and years of talking and writing versions of the script [Sausage Party] and looking at various versions of the animations - I mean, it's really a lot of workshopping and trying different things, and using the cast to try different voices and characters. And that's the good thing about animation. Because it takes so long, it allows you to explore in a way that you can't in live-action movies.

It's not my business to remedy deaths! It's my business to tell stories. Lyra and the other heroines didn't come with placards saying, "Make this a feminist story!" I'm glad people enjoy seeing a female protagonist in a big adventure story, but I didn't do it for political reasons.

Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I'll just say to Jack, "Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom" ... or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He just makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing ... I may tell him that he's gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I'll give him a plot, but we're practically both the writers on the things.

The good thing about animation is that you can affect it. If something is not working, then you just fix it.

It's always so much fun to create backstory. Even if there are more clues in the script, you still always have to invent a lot for yourself. I think that comes naturally.

We improv-ed scenes that didn't happen in the movie. We improv-ed the scenes that are written in the movie without the dialogue as written. We played around a lot to try and figure out just how we could flow with what was already written in the story and how we could highlight those imbalances and those points at which we came to loggerheads.

Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town!)

I want to be able to create characters for as long as I can and I want to tell stories for as long as I can but unfortunately I'm not given those opportunities because I'm often boxed into the former category...