Animation requires a great deal of concentration, and I preferred to work alone because then I’m not deterred by somebody asking me if I want coffee, or the phone ringing or something.
If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.
Medusa was fascinating to work with because I gave her a snake’s body so that she could pull herself with her hands which gave her a very creepy aura. I didn’t want to animate cosmic gowns. Most Medusas you see in the classics have flowing robes which would be mad to even try to animate.
When you put a big budget into a film, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a better picture, but it does help in creating new images on the screen.
There’s a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in King Kong, that adds to the fantasy. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.
You could believe that Sinbad could fight a skeleton because that’s from a period in the past, a magical period. But if you had James Bond fighting a skeleton, it’d be almost comical.
That’s why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.
I know pretty well in the broad sense what I’m going to do, because I have to know that when we shoot the live-action, so that it’ll synchronize. Then I know pretty well when I get to the animation stage, what that scene requires.
I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school.
I brought in the stories many times. I don’t just do animation.