A Quote by Chris Wedge

You look at Japan and Hayao Miyazaki's films are the biggest films ever made in Japan; domestically there and they play to critical acclaim around the world. He won't put more then 5 or 10 percent computer imagery in his movies. It's disappointing to me. It's a silly choice that some studios made to move out of animation. It's part of the unfortuneate preconception that I think the public has going into see animation.
I've always loved animation it's the reason why I do what I do for a living - the films of Walt Disney. This art form is so spectacular and beautiful. And I never quite understood the feeling amongst animation studios that audiences today only wanted to see computer animation. It's never about the medium that a film is made in, it's about the story. It's about how good the movie is.
Animation, for me, is a wonderful art form. I never understood why the studios wanted to stop making animation. Maybe they felt that the audiences around the world only wanted to watch computer animation. I didn't understand that, because I don't think ever in the history of cinema did the medium of a film make that film entertaining or not. What I've always felt is, what audiences like to watch are really good movies.
Some of the gangster films I made - not so much the 'Krays,' because I'm really proud of that - but some of the films I made after that... There are a few of those movies I wish I'd never gone near. I'm proud of about 10 percent that I've ever done. If I never see the rest again I won't mind.
Films are made the same today, as they've ever been made, in certain respects. The scriptwriting, the pre-production, the storyboarding, and the designing are all the same. The technique of animation has changed, in the sense that rather than drawing it by hand, we use a computer as a tool. The computer has become a pencil to draw or paint the images that we see in a film.
Yeah, once we decided to use that replacement animation, and the seams are a function of that animation, and other movies paint those out, we decided we wanted to keep the presence of the animation and the type of animation that it was rather than make it look polished. It created a kind of vulnerability, I think.
I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. 'My Neighbor Totoro' and 'Castle in the Sky' are two of the great films that he's made that I just love.
I so love the animation process. Interesting, everything that I do in animation, the kind of crafting and skills of storytelling, totally work within the structure of the Disney nature films. In a weird way, I like to think that animation is like painting, and Disney nature is like sculpting. Animation you start with a blank canvas and you paint. With Disney nature, you start with a big block of imagery and you hone it down into your final story. Somewhere you end up with something kind of pretty to watch.
Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.
I intend to work until the day I die. I retired from feature-length films but not from animation. Self-indulgent animation. It's nice that I have the mini-theater in the museum. Most of the museum visitors attend the mini-theater screenings and we've never had a complaint about the quality of the films. I'd like to continue to make films that leave the audience satisfied, but I also think it's pointless unless I offer them the kind of animation they can't get anywhere else. They're fun to do. They're short so it's less stressful.
I really enjoy watching animation films and I have always been curious about how such well-established actors in Hollywood lend their voices to animation films.
One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by and large made not by film studios but by broadcasting companies. They're either extensions of popular television dramas or adaptations of manga or anime. Younger Japanese are simply not being exposed to good films. That situation needs to change.
I think of Ray Harryhausen's work - I knew his name before I knew any actor or director's names. His films had an impact on me very early on, probably even more than Disney. I think that's what made me interested in animation: His work.
For me, one of the great tragedies is the conclusion studios have drawn about traditional animation. I believe that 2D animation could be just as vital as it ever was. I think the problem has been with the stories.
The industry in Japan moving toward CGI is not as severe and extreme as in the U.S. The animation industry in the U.S. is firing 2D animators and closing those studios, but I think it's possibly because the national traits of the U.S. prefer super-realism. Since Japan is a country that prefers plane vision, I don't think we will leave 2D and substitute hand-drawing with CGI entirely.
If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.
I have a confession. I don't enjoy animation. I have no idea why because I absolutely adore doing voiceovers. I think part of me feels that animation has put an actor out of work.
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