Best Animation Quotes

The best way for a beginner to write for animation is to closely watch animated films, then read the screenplays for them afterwards. ~ Douglas Wood

I'm involved with every single thing that they do as far as just being aware, and then they ask my opinion. I'm involved in the sequence reviews and some of the animation reviews and character designs and things like that. I give my input on that movie as well. ~ Klay Hall

Suddenly he spotted Gran deep in conversation with Kitty's closest friend, and relief coursed through him. Gran would squelch the tale at once. And once she tried to quash the gossip, he would win-because he could then threaten to send notice to the papers of his betrothal if she didn't back down. She'd have no choice but to give up on her scheme.
Except…she wasn't acting as if she meant to squelch it. She was talking to the other woman with great animation. And when she met his gaze from across the room, beaming from ear to ear, he realized in a flash that he'd misunderstood everything. Everything.
She hadn't been bluffing him. All the rot about trying to buy Maria off, the disapproving looks and snide remarks…all along, Gran had been goading him toward what she wanted. God preserve him.
With a sickening sense of inevitability, he saw her go to the duchess's side and whisper a few words, then saw the duchess rise and tap her glass to indicate she had an announcement to make. With a triumphant smile, Gran announced the engagement of her grandson, the Marquess of Stoneville, to Miss Maria Butterfield of Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
All eyes turned to him, and the whispers began anew.
He couldn't believe it. How could he have been so blind? He'd lost the battle, maybe even the war. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Do you know what geography really is?" Ted asked. "It's not the shapes of countries or a list of trade routes. Geography is a snapshot of war, plain and simple. It's a record of the state of hostile powers at a moment of suspended animation. ~ Christopher Bollen

There is a scene in the movie where Astrid and Hiccup fly on Toothless's back toward the island of Berk. The animation is intensely real, from the waves on the sea to wisps of wind blowing in the characters' hair. The feeling I get watching that scene is why I fly - just for that feeling. ~ Craig Ferguson

Sure, they were simple desk lamps with only a minimal amount of movement, but you could immediately tell that Luxo Jr. was a baby, and that the big one was his mother. In that short little film, computer animation went from a novelty to a serious tool for filmmaking. ~ John Lasseter

I am a proud mother - that's another reason I love doing any kind of animation. When my son was growing up, if he was watching something animated and I was in it, that was way cooler to him than seeing me in a movie. ~ Virginia Madsen

Animation means to invoke life, not to imitate it. ~ Chuck Jones

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

I think, in Japan, animation isn't relegated to being a genre unto itself. It's just a medium by which you can tell any number of stories, be it horror or action or adventure or drama or whatever, and we're trying to do that as well. Every film that you go see from Pixar, we're hoping is a little bit of a surprise. ~ Pete Docter

Directly he was alone, he was assailed by her simulacra, in all states of acute sorrow, or smiling, of complete abstraction or painful animation, of dress and undress, as he had seen her these last few days: directly he was alone, the images came to mock everything he had seen. Her sadness became shrieking grief, and her animation riotous, immodest in dress and licentious in nakedness, many-limbed as some wild avatar of the Hindu cosmology assaulting the days he spent copying his work on clean scores, and the nights he passed alone in his chair where, instantly the lights went out, everything was transformed, and the body he had seen a moment before with no more surprise than its simple lines and modest unself-conscious movement permitted, rose up on him full-breasted and vaunting the belly, limbs undistinguishable until he was brought down between them and stifled in moist collapse. ~ William Gaddis

Nobody does animation better than Disney; it's just that some of us wanted out of the box. Burton was one. I was another. We were the mutual complaint society. ~ Henry Selick

In terms of animation, animators are actors as well. They are fantastic actors. They have to draw from how they feel emotionally about the beat of a scene that they're working on. They work collaboratively. ~ Andy Serkis

Born of necessity, the little fellow literally freed us of immediate worry. He provided the means for expanding our organization to its present dimensions and for extending the medium cartoon animation towards new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us. ~ Walt Disney

The quality and success of Disney was actually bad for us animators because everyone on the planet thought that animation was only for kids and only in a certain domain. The big film festivals never thought much about animated films. ~ Michel Ocelot

I think the biggest difference is in live action, you show up, and there's a set there and a ground to stand on, at least, and in animation, there's kinda nothing. You are making decisions on everything. ~ Dan Scanlon

There's the fact that animation is extremely time-consuming, tedious, labor-intensive, and therefore, extremely expensive as an art form to really do it right, to really do full animation. ~ Eric Drooker

I did not know what breath meant until she died. It was everything that gave me quickness and life: it was thought, feeling, animation. Without it there was nothing. ~ Helen Dunmore

The same sort of thing was supposed to happen when performance animation was invented: Everybody thought it would save so much time. But it became its own niche altogether. ~ Lev Yilmaz

I'm a bit of a weird creature ... I'm self taught and went to a regular film school, not art school, and I think it's unusual for somebody to approach animation from that angle. In a sense I've sometimes consclassered myself more of a filmmaker who just happens to animate. ~ Don Hertzfeldt

Obviously as a kid, for probably anybody who chose animation voiceover as a career in their adult life, Mel Blanc was the touchstone for everybody. He kind of invented the job and was the first voice actor to get onscreen credit. ~ Tom Kenny

If it is fancy which bestows brilliancy on our ideas, if it is memory which gives them stability, passion doth more, it animates them. ... To make me believe it is enough to show me that things are so; to make me act, it is necessary to show that the action will answer some end. ~ George Campbell

Better quarters could have been found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always hard at work and in a hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty shed?" the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity. ~ Leo Tolstoy

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

He met indeed many accomplished and amiable ecclesiastics, but it seemed to him that the more thoughtful among them had either acquired their peace of mind at the cost of a certain sensitiveness, or had taken refuge in a study of the past, as the early hermits fled to the desert from the disorders of Antioch and Alexandria. None seemed disposed to face the actual problems of life, and this attitude of caution or indifference had produced a stagnation of thought that contrasted strongly with the animation of Sir William Hamilton's circle in Naples. The result ~ Edith Wharton

In video games and animation, you find that the toughest things to make different are the things that aren't words: grunts, groans, gasps. ~ Phil LaMarr

Am I bothering you?"

"Yes." Samuel lifted his chin as he said this, jutting it at me, like he said the word purposely to hurt me and make me angry.

"What am I doing that's bothering you?" I again fought the wet that threatened to undermine my dignity. I spoke each word distinctly, focusing on the shape and sound instead of the sentiment.

"You are so....." His smooth voice was layered with turbulence and frustration. Samuel rarely raised his voice, and didn't do so now, but the threat was there. "You are so… calm, and accepting, and NAIVE that sometimes…I just want to shake you!"

I wondered what in the world had brought on this vehement attack and sat in stunned silence for several heartbeats.

"I bother you because I'm calm...and accepting?" I said, my voice an incredulous squeak. "Do you want me to be hyper and, well, intolerant?"

"It would be nice if you questioned something, sometime." Samuel was revving up to his argument; I could see the animation in his face. "You live in your own happy little world. You don't know how it feels to not belong anywhere! I don't belong anywhere!"

"Why do you think I created my own happy little world?" I shot back. "I fit in perfectly there! ~ Amy Harmon

My husband and I are in preproduction of three movies, a Latin show, and a children's animation. I'm doing a very unique nail polish line, and finally, I'm developing a hair care line because people always ask me about my hair care system. I do a mask once a week that my grandma taught me how to make, so I want to share it with everyone. ~ Joyce Giraud

Of all studios that should be doing 2-D animation, it should be Disney. ~ John Lasseter

I like making comics and animation because it takes such a long time. I'm not a runner of the 100 meter. I like marathons. The longer it takes, the better I feel. ~ Marjane Satrapi

I brought in the stories many times. I don't just do animation. ~ Ray Harryhausen

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

One of the things about animation is it's so expensive to do the animation, that you can't produce coverage. You only have one chance to make every shot. ~ John Lasseter

Well, the nice thing about animation, you don't even really have to account for yourself. All of the physical stuff that you work on as an actor, you just throw away. ~ Paul Newman

I want to give credit where credit is due to Eric Radomski, who is the head of our production for Marvel Animation and who also happened to direct the pilot as well, has been the supervising producer on the show and has really been just looking at every single way that we can just plus up. This is a great-looking show. ~ Jeph Loeb

Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside.
It's furrow, pinch, and judgement that make us look older - our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick, and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integrity stick as well. ~ Anne Lamott

With our collective shock, what we saw seemed to be frozen into a state of suspended animation. Indelibly etched into our memories in terror, forever! My life was in slow motion, it was as if I was no longer in my body and this was a rather bad dream! It is almost impossible to describe with words what I saw, but I will try. This very experience is the one that has continued to shake me awake during the dense night of my lifetime. ~ Alfred Nestor

Even if you have money, access to MoCap technology, and strong choreographic and computer-animation abilities, don't try to make a film like this if you don't have a lot of patience, perseverance and a deep affinity for risk-taking. ~ Martine Epoque

I used to think that animation was about moving stuff. In order to make it really great, you bounce it, squash it, stretch it, make the eyes go big. But, as time went on, I started loving animating a character who had a kind of burning passion in her heart. Suddenly, animation became for me not so much about moving stuff as it was about moving the audience. ~ Glen Keane

If you ask anyone in animation, how long they've been into animation, they'll pretty much always tell you that it's since they can remember, and I'm no exception. ~ Alex Hirsch

I was a little shocked at how adult some of the humor was, because I was never that into animation before and when I watched 'Shrek' I really laughed out loud. ~ Cheryl Hines

I do have more directorial control over animation, because it's like trial and error: If something doesn't work, you can always go back and change certain things. Whereas in live action, every day is a challenge, and you have to make decisions on an hourly basis. So in live action I have more freedom as a director, but in animation, I have more control over the final product. ~ Mamoru Oshii

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 get nervous about the effect that the high speed of everything will have on creativity. It's already sad for me to see that a lot of young aspiring cartoonists are putting stuff on the web, doing animation on the computer rather than making zines or mini-comics, which seem to be going the way of the dinosaur. ~ Adrian Tomine

In that brief glance Vronsky has time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable smile. ~ Leo Tolstoy

When caricaturist, Al Hirschfeld, did a drawing of a celebrity, it often looked more like the person than the person did. That's our goal in animation. ~ Brad Bird

I have more faith in doing something creative for a cable station or something like Yahoo or Google or Amazon. What Netflix did with 'House of Cards' and David Fincher was brilliant. That is inspiring to me. I think there is more chance for creativity in animation, it just hasn't happened there yet. ~ Henry Selick

Don't let the daily routine kill your creativity. Remember who you were before you got that job. ~ Morr Meroz