I think 'Wreck-It Ralph' can stand proudly in the pantheon of the great Disney animated films. It's a fairy tale disguised as something more contemporary. With its balance of heart and comedy, it is still very much rooted in the Disney legacy.
I would say that what we called the Pixar sensibility goes back even further. It is kind of a CalArts sensibility because so many of the people who are creative instrumental people at Pixar came from that school.
I think when, like, things like 'The Wizard' and even like 'Tron,' when it first came out, I was a teenager, and, man, I really wanted to kind of just kind of disappear into it.
We can't put up a movie that looks beautiful but doesn't have substance.
This new generation of animators was trained in CG. They know all the fundamentals of any 2D animator, but a lot of them learned on these CG rigs. You give them a good rig, and they can make that thing sing.
I love that fans feel comfortable enough to send us their artwork.
For artists, we're always looking for approval. We're putting our artwork out there and saying, 'What do you think?'
I remember the N64 coming out. That was a beautiful day.
I loved 'The Secret of NIMH.' When that came out, it felt like, 'Wow, this is something really, really new.' It looked like a Disney film, but it felt very cutting edge to me. To a twelve-year-old kid, it seemed very inspiring.
I loved the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Lion and you could kind of see the actors' faces in them. It wasn't an entirely new face sculpted around them. What made those characters so human and appealing to me was seeing those great actors underneath there. They weren't lost behind a bunch of appliances.
I think that 'Family Guy' and 'The Critic' come from some of the same kind of seed. I don't know what it is.
I think it would be impossible to make a movie about video games if there wasn't some violence that we know from video games.
It feels like there's something for everyone in video games. It's not just a toy for a certain age group. It's steeped in the culture now.
Rather than just making a movie about video games, I wanted to start with the character and what the character was going through.
I never saw a Laurel & Hardy movie in a theater when they first ran, when I was a kid. But as a child, I knew who they were, and knew the culture of it, what they meant.
Judy Hopps truly believes in something. We're not just giving her the run of the story, where we give her everything. Through her actions, she has to prove what she believes in. Personally speaking, I think that's cool.
I went to Cal Arts. I went to art school.
There was a moment with 'Zootopia' where we said, 'This is the experiment: let's try Judy in the role of the protagonist. Let her character introduce us to the city and this world.' And suddenly, all that struggling and trying to make traction into this story was done.
I remember as a kid seeing Pong in a pizza place where I grew up in Oxnard, California, and having my mind blown by it. I thought it was a TV. I thought it was just something playing on a television. But then to be able to manipulate the paddle, and the ball with the knob was, in those days, pretty huge to a little kid! It was a simpler time.
The challenge is, how do you take someone who's supposed to be a villain and make that appealing and lovable? You have to empathize with him and put yourself in his shoes and root for him and want him to have the things he wants.
