Dave McKean Quotes

It's not even been a two-and-two-make five sort of day, it's more like a two-and-two-make ... fish

I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb.

Usually, the most difficult thing to do is photo-real stuff. Something that has to actually look like the real world, because it's just so difficult to do that. We're just so used to looking at the real world, our brains instantly see when something is not quite right.

I'm a huge science fan; I read a lot of science books. But I'm not a scientist, my interest in science is I love the facts, but I like to interpret those facts. They become the raw materials for stories and paintings and things.

My stuff is generally quite collage-y anyway. So it's sort-of suited to gathering raw materials like shooting actors, then making stills or animating characters, then just bringing them all together in a 3D space. That process is very close to my 2D work anyway.

I don't want to get pigeonholed just doing just family films and fantasy films ... I don't really want to get pigeonholed just doing anything in particular.

And then a strange thing happened. Out of the diseased and deteriorated pool os tired thoughts came life. A simple and poisoned life, but a life nonetheless. Death cultivated tis bacteria with love and attention. It thived in its stifling, hopeless world, sapping Death os all its energy, but Death didn't notice, for all its attention went on the fracturing, multiplying, fragmentary creations inside it.
And when the virus had eaten every fleck of Death, it lived on in Death's dry sarcophagus.
Life implied by Death.

I like being able to do anything. I think that's healthy, doing anything and everything, rather than just getting completely obsessed with one particular genre or particular kind of work.

LEO: We're the last to leave.

BARKEEP: Ahuhrumhuh...koff, koff, humn...

LEO: Do you think he wants us to leave?

KAREN: No, no, probably just a bit of sarcasm gone down the wrong way.

Dreams are collisions of memories, they fuse the inconvenience of a mislaid pen with the grief of losing a loved one. They create hybrids, centaurs.

Sometimes the things I learn making paintings or drawings - composition, colour, expressionism, texture - can directly influence the making of a film. Sometimes it's great that they are different, and simply taking a break from one medium to spend time with another, recharges the batteries and I feel refreshed.

When you just get fantasy stories that are about fairies or goblins, I just don't care. I'm never going to meet a goblin, it doesn't mean anything to me. So my definition of fantasy is very broad, it's anything to do with memory, or dreams, or ways of interpreting or making sense of the world.

The depressing majority of comics seem to be about violence of one sort or another, [...] And I just don't enjoy violence. I can see that narratively it is often a powerful spike in a story, but I certainly don't want to dwell on it. I don't want it in my real life, I don't find violence entertaining in and of itself, or exciting, or funny.

But sex is happily part of most people's lives, and crosses the mind most days, I would say, even if it's just watching your partner get out of bed in the morning. [...] Most pornography is pretty awful. I mean, it does the job at the most utilitarian level, but it rarely excites other areas of the mind, or the eye. It's repetitive, bland and often a bit silly. I was interested in trying to do something that has an aesthetic beauty to it if possible, and something that tickles the intellect as well as the more basic areas of the mind. Maybe that's not possible, and as soon as you start to think too much, it stops working as pornography. I don't think so, but I guess it's in the eye and mind of the viewer.

There are so many comics about violence. I'm not entertained or amused by violence, and I'd rather not have it in my life. Sex, on the other hand, is something the vast majority of us enjoy, yet it rarely seems to be the subject of comics. Pornography is usually bland, repetitive and ugly, and, at most, 'does the job.' I always wanted to make a book that is pornographic, but is also, I hope, beautiful, and mysterious, and engages the mind.

Reading a good comic is a creative act. Watching a film is often a more passive experience, and since I'm interested in engaging that conversational aspect of creativity, I'm trying to find ways of achieving that in my films.

I like stories that exist both in the naturalistic world and in our imaginative lives, films are so immersive in that sense, we can explore how our characters think and dream, as well as how they exist in the real world.

I've always liked making things that don't deny the medium that they're made in. If it's collage, I'm happy for it to look like that. If it's a film made with computers, I don't mind that it looks like a film made with computers as long as it still has a feeling or a mood or an atmosphere that is relevant.

I tend to be known for different things. I mean, there are a lot of comics or sci-fi fans out there who sort of think of me doing that kind of work, but there are just as many people who like the CD covers I've done, or the children's books I've done. So different people like different things.

She looked out at the other trees, and she realised that her life was one of thousands, any one of which could have been her, she had grown wherever her life had taken her, she had drifted wherever the wind had blown her.

The filmmakers I really love are the ones that let me look through their eyes for a while. They have an aesthetic and social point of view.

But actually making pictures to look like my pictures, I've done it for so long, I'm kind of used to it now. So at the beginning of the process, designing and storyboarding everything, I sort of did all that. And then designed the characters, and doing the textures for the characters, and the texture maps to cover all the animated characters and the sets, I did those, because that's where my sort of coloring and textures get imprinted on the film.