Animator Quotes

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

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

I do not draw any of the pictures for my movies as an animator. The reason for that is that I am terribly lucky to have many staff members who I look up to, and who are overflowing with talent, that work with me on each project. ~ Mamoru Hosoda

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

In college, I was a cartoonist at 'The Daily Northwestern.' So I draw myself. I was an animator. But basically, I went to Northwestern to major in English, wound up in college for two years. Studied animation there. Came to Disney. My first week at Disney was the week that 'Star Wars' came out. ~ John Musker

At one point, I was hell-bent on being a Disney animator, and sort of got over that in college and wanted to do my own stuff. You know, towards the end of college I had actually planned to go to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater. ~ Seth MacFarlane

Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers. ~ Homer Simpson

An actor uses his body as a tool and an instrument. In the same way a musician plays an instrument, the actor uses his body to convey feeling and emotion. An animator uses a pencil or a computer to create the same thing, the same exact way. An actor is taking words that are not his own, and he has to bring some kind of authentic life to those words. It's the same goal, to create this authentic life. Even if it's a drawing, or if it's a cartoon, you're still trying to create authenticity because, if the character emotes authentically, it has a power to connect with the audience. ~ Rob Minkoff

Walt was a dreamer, but one who pursued his goals with clarity and an almost ferocious intensity." JACK KINNEY DISNEY ANIMATOR ~ Pat Williams

Literally overnight, I became an animator ... and one that was well-known. ~ Terry Gilliam

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

Disney and I were a bad mix. For a year I was probably more depressed than I have ever been in my life. I worked for a great animator, Glenn Kean. He was nice, he was good to me, he's a really strong animator and he helped me. But he also kind of tortured me because I got all the cute fox scenes to draw, and I couldn't draw all those four-legged Disney foxes. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't even fake the Disney style. Mine looked like road kills. ~ Tim Burton

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

Honestly, every person, every individual has a process, and my philosophy, whether it's an actor or an animator, is you try to understand the process that person has so you can get the most out of them, but I think you have to sort of manipulate that process with honesty. ~ Gore Verbinski

You draw the character from all angles - side, profile, back, etc. so the animator has this character in all the ways it looks like. ~ Marjane Satrapi

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 have a film where there's an evil figure and a good person fights against the evil figure and everything becomes a happy ending, that's one way to make a film. But then that means you have to draw, as an animator, the evil figure. And it's not very pleasant to draw evil figures ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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

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

I've always drawn, for example, and I did consider when I was younger, it was either do I become an actor or do I become an animator cartoonist at that point. Do I work at Disneyworld or something and do animated cells or something? ~ David Hornsby

In a comic strip, you can suggest motion and time, but it's very crude compared to what an animator can do. I have a real awe for good animation. ~ Bill Watterson

All the old great companies were run by guys who knew what an animator meant, and guys who knew how to draw. All the companies today are run by executives. ~ Ralph Bakshi

'In-between' is sort of - an animator does the key poses. He'll do extremes, you know, like a character reaching out for a glass of water and then another one of him drinking. And the in-betweener has to do all the drawings that goes between those two. You know it could be 12, 23 whatever in-betweens. ~ Pete Docter

First of all, computer animation is certainly a tremendous and viable medium today. But the warmth and personality derived from 2-D animation, in my opinion, cannot be surpassed. Certain stories lend themselves well to 3-D animation and I won't labor this with naming them, but in my bones, I still respond more emotionally to the artists feel in 2-D. You feel the 'actor' in the animator more personally ... it's hard to explain. ~ Richard Sherman

I decided I wanted to be a painter, and then that moved into wanting to be an animator. By adolescence, I just wanted it to be something that was important ... something that would make a difference in people's lives or leave an imprint in history. ~ Evangeline Lilly

I'm a big fan of pantomime storytelling, being an animator. ~ John Lasseter

With my personal work I prefer not to work from storyboards because being a director, producer and animator in one person I don't have to communicate my idea to anyone else, I can keep the feeling of the story, the story arc and structure in my head. ~ Signe Baumane

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

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

I still have the same outlook on things that I did 10, 20 years ago. As an animator, there's no career path that you can follow; there's very few people doing this that you can look to and pinpoint the mistakes. It hasn't changed since I was little. You have interests and follow them and strange things happen, organically or not. ~ Don Hertzfeldt

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

Maybe it's not to much to hope that the Disney Company might one day get over its self-imposed fears and finally find its own Laughing Place.
-Floyd Norman
Disney Legend
June 2012 ~ Jim Korkis

Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time. ~ John Lasseter

Theresa strode over to us in a swish of cloth. "Enough of this, animator. He can't do it, so he pays the price. Either leave now, or join us at our ... feast."
Are you having rare Who-roast-beast?" I asked.
What are you talking about?"
It's from Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. You know the part, 'And they'd Feast! Feast! Feast! Feast! Feast! They would feast on Who-pudding and rare Who-roast-beast.'"
You are crazy."
So I've been told. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

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

Pixar has invented much of computer animation as it's known today, and I've been very lucky to be the first traditional animator to work with computer animation. ~ John Lasseter

I hired Bob at Terrytoons. He was my assistant animator, and then became an animator himself. He had just come from Boston with his family and was a brilliant draftsman as well as a great jazz guitarist. We had lots of fun nights in Greenwich Village together and then later hanging in LA. Bob worked on Fritz the Cat , Heavy Traffic , Coonskin , and on Wizards . I am terribly saddened by his passing and will miss him dearly. ~ Ralph Bakshi

The swirling lines of snow were composed of separate flakes, and each flake was a cluster of separate ice crystals--scientists had counted over a hundred of them in a single flake. Under the microscope each minuscule crystal, colorless and transparent, revealed a secret symmetry: six sides, the outward expression of an inward geometry of frozen molecules of water. But the real wonder was that no two crystals were precisely alike. In one of this father's camera magazines he had seen a stunning display of photomicrographs, and what was most amazing about the enlarged crystals was that each contained in its center a whole world of intricate six-sided designs, caused by microscopic air pockets. For no conceivable reason, Nature in a kind of exuberance created an inexhaustible outpouring of variations on a single form. A snowstorm was a fall of jewels, a delirium of hexagons--clearly the work of a master animator. ~ Steven Millhauser

My first ambition was to be an animator for Walt Disney. Then I wanted to be a magazine cartoonist. ~ John Updike

You know, I love stop-motion. I've done almost all the styles of animation: I was a 2D animator. I've done cutout animation. I did a CG short a few years ago, 'Moongirl,' for young kids. Stop-motion is what I keep coming back to, because it has a primal nature. It can never be perfect. ~ Henry Selick

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

And as particles are living digital elements, moving on their own according to the various attributes (such as weight, speed, shape) given to them by the animator, we don't know what the visual result will be until everything is completed. This result can often be unsatisfying, obliging us to repeat the process all over again, with new features. ~ Martine Epoque

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

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

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director. ~ John Lasseter

I wanted to be an animator originally. I went to art school; I went to art college and everything. But that screen was just calling me. ~ Damon Wayans, Jr.

When I was four years old, some friends of my family took me to see 'Fantasia' and I was totally blown away. From that minute on I wanted to be an animator. ~ David Bolinsky

Nine times out of ten, I'm trying to meet someone else's expectations, whether it's the director or the writer or the animator, when I go back in to re-record a line. I'm the icing on the cake, but the cake is the thing. I'm really just a hood ornament on a very solid vehicle. ~ Adrian Pasdar