Animation Direction Quotes

My respect for animation has gone way up. It's a truckload of work. I have to sit with my animators the same way I'd sit with my actors and cast them.

Well, directing is doing the key drawings, not the key animation, mind you.

I'm meant to be an animation director. That world, and the culture of stop-motion, is where I want to live. It's more my problem than Hollywood's. I'm not attuned to Hollywood.

A big part of directing animation is deciding what you really want to do and making sure it's about something. My favorite thing about animation is the storytelling. You can really dig into the story and spend time with the writers. The writers don't just write and leave.

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.

To direct a genuinely animated film, you're really having meetings and discussing what you want with animators who then go off and produce one shot at a time that you look at and comment on.

It's been an ambition of mine, before I even wanted to act, to be involved in animation.

Animation had been used only for things like King Kong and the destruction of cities, which was very popular in the 1950s. I got tired of destroying cities. I destroyed New York, I destroyed San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, Rome, and Washington. I was looking for a new outlet, and I came across the Sinbad legends.

As animation directors, you're the first one on the film; you're the last one off, and you get to learn from and touch every department throughout the whole journey. I don't know any other job in the world that's like that. I don't think live-action is like that. It's a very different sort of experience.