I brought in the stories many times. I don’t just do animation.
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.
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.
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.