A Quote by Travis Knight

Very few people view stop motion the way we do. We really try to use it - and animation generally - as a powerful visual medium by which you can tell virtually any kind of story in any genre.
I really love animation as a storytelling medium, whether it's traditional, cel animation, or CG, or stop motion, which is more our studio's area of focus. But I find that the creatives behind any kind of animation are typically very similar, and so regardless of what aesthetic they use to realize their vision, I'm usually pretty into it.
The most fun is to inhabit the world where cartoon physics is king. And that just means that things move with kind of an energy and exaggeration and appeal that is different from what we see in our world. We're bound by, at least, Newton's Laws of physics here and in animation we're not. So, director's can be extremely eccentric, you can sculpt motion in animation in a way that you just can't do any other way. In any other performance medium.
People, they think that animation is a style. Animation is just a technique. It's like, people, they think that comics is a style, like comics is a superhero story. Comic is just a narration, and is a medium, you can say any kind of story in comics and you can say of any kind of story in animation.
Motion-capture is not a genre. Motion-capture is a tool and technique and what we tried to do was to really use both motion-capture and traditional animation to build a system.
At the end of the day I see myself as a communicator. So any way that I can, any medium, any art form that I can use to communicate the truths of the Lord and scripture and my passion, then I'm going to do it. I don't know, I may do a spoken word piece one day, or I may turnaround and try to write a short story. I don't know, it just depends, but anything artistically that I can use I'll try to do it.
Learn how to draw. It's the basis of what we [animation directors] do. Keep a sketchbook. Try making a very simple little film. Try and tell a story clearly and entertainingly. Study the way people move and animate move. Observe all you can, and try and capture that simply in a few lines on paper.
Part of the job is knowing how to use this medium in the most effective way for the story you're telling, so for me, to pick a genre I want to do is a little harder. I would say it's more about thinking, 'What genre will work for what kind of story?' And then, when all of that comes, I embrace it and run with it.
Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
If I really feel that I want to shoot live people and live backgrounds, then that movie will become live-action. If I don't have any particular actors I want to use, I'd probably consider animation for that project. Which medium I use doesn't really make that much difference to me.
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.
Having animation as this time-based medium made a lot of sense for me, and then stop motion was even more fun because it was so hands-on and physical in a way that I really liked.
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.
I love all sorts of animation, probably the most beautiful would be the tradtional hand drawn animation that Disney is known for. Stop-motion has a certain "grittieness" and is filled with imperfections, and yet their is an undeniable truth, that what you see really exits, even it if is posed by hand, 24 times a second. This truth is what I find most attractive about stop-motion animation.
Cinema is a kind of pan-art. It can use, incorporate, engulf virtually any other art: the novel, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture. Unlike opera, which is a (virtually) frozen art form, the cinema is and has been a fruitfully conservative medium of ideas and styles of emotions.
I do love science fiction, but it's not really a genre unto itself; it always seems to merge with another genre. With the few movies I've done, I've ended up playing with genre in some way or another, so any genre that's made to mix with others is like candy to me. It allows you to use big, mythic situations to talk about ordinary things.
I am a film director, and I work with a visual language, with a visual medium. And I try to make virtue of the use of this visual medium. And I try to make sure what I do speaks the language of cinema.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!