Quotes & Sayings About Animators

What's fun about the story development at Pixar is it's a journey. You don't just write a script and then that's the movie you make. It's just constant evolution and being open to that and that collaboration with the voice actors and with the artists and animators at Pixar. — John Lasseter

Paprika is evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox. — Manohla Dargis

The animators are fantastic though. They'll shoot their own reference material, and just go into the car park or something. And they might shoot a very funny scene, or sometimes a serious scene. But they're really just trying to work out the motion. Yet what we get treated to is hilarious video of someone running around a parking lot with a broomstick and a helmet! — Chris Sanders

Animators Inc., where our motto was Where the Living Raise the Dead for a Killing. — Laurell K. Hamilton

I've been told that some guy wrote something like, 'Andy Serkis does everything, animators do nothing.' Of course I never in a million years said that, wouldn't ever say that. It's not within my understanding of filmmaking to ever say anything like that. — Andy Serkis

I found a lot of animators bring a lot of baggage to the party, just that there's a certain way of doing things in that world that's a little hard to unlearn. — Steve Dildarian

I decided to work on hand animate because the animators work as authors in every little scene and it brings real soul for characters. — Luiz Bolognesi

In performance capture roles, it's not a committee of animators that author the role, it's the actor. I think that's a significant thing for people to understand. — Andy Serkis

It's a high honor to be a part of the Star Wars universe and such a long running show. Our talented writers, animators and cast of voice actors have made The Clone Wars truly unique. And of course we wouldn't have hit 100 episodes had it not been for our incredibly dedicated fans who make this possible! — Matt Lanter

The quality and success of Disney was actually bad for us animators because everyone on the planet thought that animation was only for kids and only in a certain domain. The big film festivals never thought much about animated films. — Michel Ocelot

Pick a school in the city you want to live and work in. The contacts you make through your teachers will be the ones that get you into a studio and start you on your career. They will most likely have worked in that city and have formed contacts with studios, directors, and animators throughout their careers. — David B. Levy

The challenge in writing the songs for The Aristocats truly fell on the animators & director of the film. Robert & I wrote the initial songs for the film, just prior to leaving full-time employment at the Walt Disney Studios. Therefore, some of the songs we wrote for The Aristocats were never used. I believe, therefore, the challenge fell upon the makers of the film to select what songs made the final cut. — Richard Sherman

'Cars' has been a godsend. I mean, I get paid to talk into a mic. Honestly, I had no idea it would become as big as it did. When I first got the part of Mater, it was actually a small part. I did the voicing for it, though, and the animators liked it so much they rewrote the original script so that Mater could be in it more. — Larry The Cable Guy

Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions. — Hayao Miyazaki

Animators have to live life 24 times as long as we do - every 24 frames of a second. — Darren Aronofsky

You know, the only way I've found to make these pictures is with animators. You can't seem to do it with accountants and bookkeepers. — Walt Disney

I animated 20 years at Terry Toons. It's important to know that animators like pizza and a raise once in a while, and you've got to treat them with love. — Ralph Bakshi

I want to see abstract art move. Especially in the '30s, you had animators doing innovative work, and I was entranced by that. It's basically what you see when you close your eyes, when you fall asleep. — Michel Gondry

(The) process of acting is no different to conventional screen acting, in that it's providing a perfect interface between the director and the performer. So there's no sort of long way around a viral committee of animators. — Andy Serkis

The Disney animators' rules on adult females: mothers are perfect but imperiled; stepmothers are wicked and occasionally homicidal; godmothers are sweet things with magical powers. — Richard Corliss

My livelihood depends on the art of animators. — Andy Serkis

Raymond Hendler exhibited a group of abstract paintings that displayed rare high spirits. Using a great deal of fresh white, Hendler devised extremely simple symbols which he dispersed felicitously on his shining grounds. These bright, often linear hieroglyphs serve both as pictorial animators-they often flow in winding patterns or like fluent handwriting-and as references to the plentitude of the artist's existence. Gardens and sky and human joy are read in these exceedingly compressed forms. — Dore Ashton

Joanna Priestley's amazing body of animated films have deservedly earned their place in the pantheon of contemporary international animators. Inventively visioned, superbly crafted, and rich with insight into the physical and spiritual dilemmas that confront us all, each new work provides an unexpected pleasure. — Bill Foster

Joanna Priestley is one of the most interesting and adept personal animators and filmmakers. I have enjoyed her work for years and been amazed at how she gets into her own thoughts onto the screen in a very elegant and focused way. You have to see this. — Gus Van Sant

The 'Aladdin' thing - that's not work; that's just fun. Three days in the recording studio going mad, then the animators do all the work. Not a bad way to cash a large check, my friend. — Robin Williams

The Catholic Church sees voluntary vampirism as a kind of suicide. I tend to agree. Though the Pope also excommunicated all animators, unless we ceased raising the dead. Fine; I became Episcopalian. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Sometimes I am just playing the character. I will move out of the way of the microphone, and they will have to tell me. Because I am moving around a lot. I am performing the cat. The animators look for that material, to see if they can put it back into the movie. — Antonio Banderas

In timing a film, we used to assume that sneaks move slowly. This was great for animators-thirty-six to forty-eight drawings for a single step-but it was sheer hell for the pace of the picture. So the rapid tiptoe was invented. — Chuck Jones

Every great artist must begin by learning to draw with the single line, and my advice to young animators is to learn how to live with that razor-sharp instrument or art. An artist who comes to me with eight or ten good drawings of the human figure in simple lines has a good chance of being hired. But I will tell the artist who comes with a bunch of drawings of Bugs Bunny to go back and learn how to draw the human body. An artist who knows that can learn how to draw ANYTHING, including Bugs Bunny. — Chuck Jones

All new tools are useful to animators, but great animation comes down to great animators. — Dean DeBlois

I think living things can recognize the movement of other living things, and all the best animators in the world can't quite capture that something. — Colin Trevorrow

I saw 'Sleeping Beauty' when I was, like, 6 years old at the Mercury Theatre. Then, when I came to Disney, I was in the company of these wonderful artists. People like Glen Keane, like Mark Henn, who were brilliant animators who could really bring these things to life. — John Musker

I think a good study of music would be indispensable to the animators - a realization on their part of how primitive music is, how natural it is for people to want to go to music - a study of rhythm, the dance - the various rhythms enter into our lives every day. — Walt Disney

We [film supervisors] always try to encourage discussion in the room because a lot of times newer animators who are just out of school or people come from other studios, they're gonna have different points of view and we want to make sure we're vetting all the ideas to get the best ones. A lot of people are shy about speaking up if this is their first time at Pixar or if they don't have a lot of experience, so we try to encourage that. — Victor Navone

When animators weren't sleeping, they were drinking. — Joseph Barbera

This Golden Globe nomination is sweet validation for the years of hard work it took to bring Coraline to life using stop-motion animation with the greatest crew of animators, artists, and technicians I've ever been privileged to work with. I share this nomination with all of them and we all share our thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press. — Henry Selick

There are times when the writers ask us to improvise. Sometimes the animators are inspired by what you do, and sometimes you are inspired by what the animators do. — Dan Castellaneta

In terms of animation, animators are actors as well. They are fantastic actors. They have to draw from how they feel emotionally about the beat of a scene that they're working on. They work collaboratively. — Andy Serkis

I know reels can be expensive but even if you construct one on your own if you don't have enough money to get a more professional one while you're getting started, as far as college animators go or young indie developers I don't think they are going to care if you have the highest quality reel yet. — Ashly Burch

There's always kids who become stop motion animators. I get stuff all the time. They put it on YouTube. It's exciting to see. — Henry Selick

The thing with animation is that you record the actors like a radio show and then the animators become actors in their own way because it's their job to take this puppets and make them seem alive. They bring their own personalities to the way they move these puppets. — Wes Anderson

I was at Disney for about four years, so I made good friends there. It was a time of not a lot of creativity. It was the end of the first great era, with a few of the original animators. They called them the Nine Old Men. I learned a lot from them, but it wasn't going to be a future home for me. — Henry Selick

I've been very lucky to work with many amazing animators and directors who can interpret and extend the music I make. When it's done well, it can create extra meaning and new context for the song. — Gotye

I just want to make sure that I give the animators everything they need, so they have plenty of choices to match their animation. — Mickey Rooney

We use shorts at the studio extensively to develop talent. I always love to give opportunities for young story people, animators, layout people something like that to take the next step up in their career and try things out. — John Lasseter

I usually get involved in the interviews about the animators and the filmmaking in general, because I had a chance.I got to know, not only Marc Davis, but Frank Thomas, Artie Johnson, Ward Kimball, all these great animators, and just ask them all these questions about how they did certain things, what their trials and errors were, the ups and downs. — Andreas Deja

I got out my jar of ointment. I knew animators who had special containers for the ointment. Crockery, hand-blown glass, mystical symbols carved into the sides. I used an old Mason jar that had once held Grandma Blake's green beans.
Larry fished out a peanut butter jar with the label still on it. Extra-crunchy. Yum-Yum. — Laurell K. Hamilton

There's always room out there for the hand-drawn image. I personally like the imperfection of hand drawing as opposed to the slick look of computer animation. But you can do good stuff either way. The Pixar movies are amazing in what they do, but there's plenty of independent animators who are doing really amazing things as well. — Matt Groening

I was pretty socially awkward as a kid, which is a common thread among animators. You have this need to connect to the rest of the world, but as soon as you do you feel totally awkward and abnormal. And so to relate to the world, you sit and draw. — Pete Doctor

Too many of Disney animators, and a lot try to emulate Disney, are trying to hit what they call quality levels. They're boring mannerisms. — Ralph Bakshi

The animators are absolutely extraordinary. It's mind-boggling. — Helena Bonham Carter

I was blessed with suck in the form of the traditional Snow White coloring: skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as coal. In the cartoons and the storybooks, they make it look almost cute. Of course, when artists and animators design a Snow White, they essentially give their incarnation of my story a spray tan and some neutral lip liner. A true seven-oh-nine was nowhere near as marketable as those animated darlings. We're too pale, and our lips are too red, and we look like something out of a horror movie that didn't have the decency to stay on the screen. — Seanan McGuire

I think all directors should be animators ... — Steven Spielberg

If you take a regular animated film, that's being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process. — Peter Jackson

I'm in the early stages of a film called 'Freezing Time' about Eadweard Muybridge, the Victorian photographer who was really the forefather of cinema. Digital animators still treat his images like the Bible. He was a very obsessed man. — Andy Serkis

I have never played a superhero in real life and I would imagine it is very different Voiceover is super easy. You just come in and do a bunch of versions of it and then the animators and directors on that side of the movie put your performance together. — Jeremy Sisto

The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again. — Michael Arndt

I have friends and illustrators who can't stand drawing on the Cintiq. [A graphic pad tablet used by digital animators] There's a certain tension and friction when you draw on paper that they miss. The tablet is very slick. It's like drawing on glass. But that didn't bother me at all. — Don Hertzfeldt

I mean, we make a 15-minute show that's incredibly silly, even though all of our scenic designers, puppet builders. animators, everybody that works on the show take their work very seriously. So somebody saying that we'd even be in contention for a very respectable award is really nice. — Seth Green

People who get into animation tend to be kids. We don't have to grow up. But also, animators are great observers, and there's this childlike wonder and interest in the world, the observation of little things that happen in life. — John Lasseter

We want to be proud of our work and make sure it's worth the talent of the animators, who spent four years of their love, sweat and tears on it. — Jennifer Yuh Nelson

People are mystified by it and so they kind of think, the acting community thinks they're gonna be replaced by CG characters and animators think they're gonna be replaced by performance capture (and) a lot of directors, particularly European directors, who have no experience of it. — Andy Serkis

The animators bring their own spontaneity to it as well, because when they do a take of a shot it really is like just one continuous activity for them. They launch into it and do it, and they're not even quite sure how it's going to turn out when they're doing it. They're sort-of sculpting their way through a scene and trying to make this inanimate object alive. — Wes Anderson

People used to want to be filmmakers and animators; now they want to make apps. — Bill Plympton

I was mentored by great Disney animators at the end of their careers. — John Lasseter

I've done animated TV stuff, but I'd never done animated film work, which is much more involved and much more labor intensive. The animators are much more meticulous and detailed. It's just been really fun and really satisfyingly creative. — Ty Burrell

Animating is a very slow, pain-staking process and the animators become the actors at that point. — Wes Anderson

I think stop-motion has always been semi-obsolete. And stop-motion animators - people like myself - love it so much that we're always going to be looking for new ways to make our films. — Henry Selick

great animators carefully craft the movements that elicit an emotional response, convincing us that these characters have feelings, emotions, intentions. — Ed Catmull

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. — Neil Patrick Harris

My respect for animators and animation directors has gone way, way up and it is just not something you can phone in. — Gore Verbinski

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. — Peter Jackson

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. — Gore Verbinski

Watching Ray Harryhausen's films growing up was a pure joy. He brought legends to life and he became a legend himself. And I am sure that future generations of animators will continue to look to him for inspiration. — Joe Letteri