Quotes About Animation

When I was growing up, I was so fascinated by Mel Blanc and all of the different voices that he did for 'Looney Tunes' and watching Robin Williams record voice-over for the genie in 'Aladdin.' It always seemed to be a major honor - something you have to earn. Like people trust you when they want to have you there without seeing you.

It's like, the more you commit, the happier the animators are; if you're at all iffy and concerned, then it doesn't free them up to do as much fun stuff, so you have to just go for it and, again, trust the people around you and not be seemingly guarded and numb. Throw caution to the wind a bit.

You're using such different muscles and you rely on physicality in live action, but in animation, you totally throw that out the window. But somehow, they're both as satisfying.

There's a lot of movies, and I've made some of them that could be categorized this way, but there's definitely been a trend in animated features of all types to be a little bit cynical, if you will, to have a little bit of 'knowing' humor to them, kind of a wink to the audience.

I founded an educational software company called Knowledge Revolution. We had the first fully animated physics lab on the computer. You could take ropes, pulleys, balls and anything else you'd use in your physics textbook and the program would allow you to build anything you can think of in a physics lab.

I wanted to make sure that 'Up' wasn't a 3D movie about a man who sails his house to South America. It's a movie about an old man who sails his house to South America that also happens to be in 3D. So the first thing is always the story.

The hardest thing to do with an animated movie is to not make it feel synthetic: to feel like it's handmade, where you can sense the human hand in it.

When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it's because he's so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.

I always say that 'Futurama' is real, and 'The Simpsons' is fiction.

When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.

With 'The Simpsons,' people didn't know what they were gonna see. They didn't have a clue.

I loved 'The Simpsons' because it didn't talk down to its audience.

I think the No. 1 lesson I learned from 'The Simpsons' was just that animation could be as funny as live-action. That animation could be funnier than live-action. That animation didn't have to just be for kids.

Anybody in animation today would be lying if they said they weren't somehow influenced by 'The Simpsons' to a certain degree. Except for the shows that go out of their way to look as far from 'The Simpsons' as possible.

I had the X rating on my films. Now they do as much on The Simpsons as I got an X rating for Fritz the Cat.

'The Simpsons' is an especially collaborative show.

Typically in animation, the characters exist in a kind of stasis. Look at 'The Simpsons' - they never age, the baby never grows up - or 'Peanuts' - the kids never grow up, they always stay the same age.

'The Simpsons' basically - and 'Futurama' - are really smart shows. They're kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you're paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated.

Are the Simpsons cool? They are, and that is crude 2D animation.

My mother had no interest in cartoons. I remember thinking, 'I am never going to grow into that person.' Which is so ironic - now I get to work on 'Family Guy' and 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama', all of these great animated series! TV was my passion.

I've never seen 'The Simpsons.'

That's been the case for decades. 'The Simpsons,' 'King of the Hill' - they do the preproduction in America, and the production is in Korea or in some cases China, or occasionally Japan or India.

The first thing I did as a child was draw. I wanted to make animated movies. I think Disney's 'Cinderella' was the first movie I ever saw. 'Peter Pan' was the first movie I ever saw in the movie theater. I grew up with 'Dumbo' and 'Pinocchio' and 'Sword in the Stone.' Those were the movies I wanted to make.

The first movie I saw was 'Prince of Egypt' - that was the first movie I saw in theaters.