We wanted to figure out a way to get crank phone calls on television. Watching someone on TV talking on a phone isn't that entertaining, and obviously we couldn't send a camera crew around to the people getting the calls, so it was limited to either animation or puppets. And puppets seemed halfway between cartoons and people, so that seemed like the most real way that we could do it.
It is pretty amazing to go from being a print cartoonist to having a hit animated television show, although I secretly expected it [The Simpsons] do well.
Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
The main thing missing from cartoons is today that old cartoons were cartoony. They did things you can't do in any other medium. Today's cartoons are very conservative and are more like live action. The characters look the same in every frame of the damn cartoon. The old cartoons squashed, stretched, and did crazy expressions. They were imaginative and crazy. A lot of cartoons aren't imaginative, they just say things. It might as well be radio. There is no point in having anything to look at in modern cartoons. But you can't say that about every cartoon. Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoons are beautiful. The closest thing now to what I'm saying is SpongeBob but even that doesn't go very far. It's like a conservative version of Ren & Stimpy.
Animation in itself is an art form, and that's the point I think always needs clarification. True animation exists without any background, or any color, or any sound, or anything else; it exists in your hand. And you can take it and flip it. [...] What makes animation is the fact that you have a series of drawings that move. You don't even have to have a camera, you see; animation exists without it. If you want to broaden your audience, or make it more colorful or add music, then you put it under a camera one frame at a time, and then you run it at the same speed as you flip it, and then you have animation. If it depends basically upon soundtrack, or basically upon music, or color, graphic design, or anything else to sustain itself, then it is not unique to animation.
Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually it implies some risk — especially in new undertakings. Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering and adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.
A good film is one that requires the viewer to create, through an orchestration of impressions, the meaning of its events. It is, in the end, our ability to create meaning out of the raw experience of life that makes us human. It is the exercise of our faculty to discover meaning which is the purpose of art. The didactic imparting of moral or political messages is emphatically not the purpose of art -- that is what we call propaganda.
There's none of this wisecracking and cynicism that you see in ... some of the other cartoons. He's supposed to be a role model for kids. He cares about other people.
If it is a dying craft we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era. Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do.
— Hayao Miyazaki, on the topic of hand-drawn animation (2005)
I was taking animation and illustration and I was just a huge fan of the show and I knew the show was going to be something big. However, I never thought it would last this long, but I wanted to be part of it. I really thought that it was something that could last maybe one or two or years or so and I took a few animation tests but I failed the first group and so I asked them what was right and wrong about it and I followed directions and gave it to them within 48 hours and they hired me.
Any story can be told in animation. I’m hoping someone will try to tell a story that’s brand new, not one that’s similar to every other story we've seen.
I think what set the [1990's] apart was the fact that the climate was ripe for people taking chances and doing different things. Both Nick and Cartoon Network were able to invest on people who had nothing to lose. Of course, the result of that was that there was a big explosion in the scene. There were big successes—like that yellow sponge that popped up in a big way—and with that success came another era where people aren’t apt to take as many chances because the stakes are too high.
And the weight I’m putting on the animation team is to go beyond the cliché, and I’m going to cite one just because it annoys me: when you see a character who’s embarrassed rubbing his neck or rubbing his arm. You don’t want to go there; you want to go for that thing that the other guy won’t be thinking about, expressing that same idea of impatience or nervousness or agitation. You want to aim for that little human physical reaction that you’ve not seen before, but that you’ve unconsciously done that tells you that this character that you’re looking at is actually living with real emotions.
I suppose "canon" means what Gene Roddenberry decided it was. Remember, we were making it up as we went along on the original series (and on the animated one, too). We had a research company to keep us on the straight and narrow as to science, projected science based on known science, science fiction references (we didn’t want to step on anyone’s exclusive ideas in movies, other TV shows, or printed work). They also helped prevent contradictions and common reference errors. So the so-called canon evolved in its own way and its own time. For whatever reason, Gene Roddenberry apparently didn’t take the animated series seriously (no pun intended), although we worked very hard to do original STAR TREK stories and concepts at all times in the animated series.
VeggieTales is something that, on paper, makes no sense at all. It is a series of children’s videos where limbless, talking vegetables act out Bible stories. Try raising money with that pitch.
From the messages I’ve received, these episodes have lifted spirits, brought parents and kids together, changed perspectives and inspired the most unlikely of people in the most unlikely of places. Who would have thought it from a show about candy colored ponies?
I did a lot of really crappy sitcoms before I got to The Simpsons. .. It's a writer's paradise. You have no interference from the studio or the network, so you really get to do what you want. I know that once I leave the show, it's not going to be that way. So I'm very happy kind of milking it to the end.
Yes, we worry about what the critics say. Yes, we worry about what the opening box office is going to be. Yes, we worry about what the final box office is going to be. But really, the whole point why we do what we do is to entertain our audiences. The greatest joy I get as a filmmaker is to slip into an audience for one of our movies anonymously, and watch people watch our film. Because people are 100 percent honest when they're watching a movie. And to see the joy on people's faces, to see people really get into our films...to me is the greatest reward I could possibly get.
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