Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.
Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn.
The way Disney characters move, they're very kind of slow and fluid and flowing; one pose kind of eases into the next. If you look at a show like 'The Simpsons' and subsequently a show like 'Family Guy' - the characters will jerk from pose to pose a lot, a bit more snappy. Which sort of goes along with the writing tone of the show.
In animation, you can often defer decisions or make changes later.
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.
Animation in itself has so many different looks and styles and possibilities.
I quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second.
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.
Animators have to live life 24 times as long as we do - every 24 frames of a second.
I used to animate. I started in animation, and you'd end every day with at least one substantive contribution.
Animation is a technique, not a genre.
It's not like the computer magically does it for you. Animation just takes forever.
Movement and physics: These are the fundamentals of animation. You don't notice that stuff if it's done well, but if fabric or liquid or hair moves weird, your brain is like, 'Wait, that's not real.'
You have to always physicalize, when you do animation recording. Otherwise, you won't get the performance right.
I'm definitely looking to do more animation stuff.
