If you look back at Disney's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' or 'Pocahontas,' animated films were trying to get more and more real before CG really arrived.
I'm super comfortable with TV, especially in my situation where I pretty much have 100% freedom. That's the ideal, and I've been fortunate in TV to have pretty much everything I've done be at least somewhat successful.
I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s, loving comic books, and they were much cartoonier. And then everything became super dark and muscular and airbrushed, and I stopped collecting comics.
I mean, for sure, from my history, I have an extreme fondness for 2D. I think it feels very hand-crafted, and you see the artist's personal touch. I think something about CG makes it a bit more sterile.
I remember arguing with my dad to let me dress up to go to a Halloween party in seventh grade, but I never in my childhood went trick-or-treating.
I was an immigrant when I came, and one of my biggest things was I really wanted to fit in. I didn't want to be, 'Oh, look at that guy;' I wanted to be part of the crowd. Which is a weird thing, because the more successful I got, the more out of the crowd I became.
TV is great, and I love it, but to watch somebody's hand-crafted drawings on the big screen is an experience that we've forgotten as an audience, how much fun 2D can be.
My goal is to always try to make you feel something, whether that's humor or sadness or excitement, and to try to manipulate screen space.
There were so many amazing comic books. Like I was around for the original Frank Miller/Chris Claremont 'Wolverine' miniseries.
A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff - like Warner Brothers cartoons' pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war - and then the overall character appeal.
TV is great, and I love it, but to watch somebody's hand-crafted drawings on the big screen is an experience that we've forgotten as an audience, how much fun 2D can be.
I was an immigrant when I came, and one of my biggest things was I really wanted to fit in. I didn't want to be, 'Oh, look at that guy;' I wanted to be part of the crowd. Which is a weird thing, because the more successful I got, the more out of the crowd I became.
I had done it all in my career. I always felt, as a kid, that that's what a director needed to be. Hitchcock could do anything in my mind. He's the director. That person has to be the best actor, the best designer, the best cinematographer. Then I came to realize that isn't the case. You just need to surround yourself with the best.
Definitely that was a big part of my childhood: wanting to fit. As an immigrant, you talk funny, you look funny, you smell funny. I wanted to do nothing but fit in and talk English and sit with everybody else.
There were so many amazing comic books. Like I was around for the original Frank Miller/Chris Claremont 'Wolverine' miniseries.