John Lasseter Quotes

Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time.

I do what I do because of Walt Disney - his films and his theme park and his characters and his joy in entertaining.

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.

The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.

Toys are put on this Earth to be played with by a child.

You can achieve all the things you want to do, but it's much better to do it with loved ones around you; family and friends, people that you care about that can help you on the way and can celebrate you, and you can enjoy the journey.

Quality is the best business plan.

It [moviemaking] is about entertaining audiences with great characters and great stories, you want to make people laugh, you want to make people cry, you want to have great music that is memorable. You want a movie that, as soon as it's over, you want to watch it again, just like that. That's what it is, whether it's live-action, animation, hand drawn, computer, special effects, puppet animation, it doesn't matter. That's the goal of a filmmaker.

Your voice is worthwhile. Have faith in it.

Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.

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.

If you can think about it, you can create it.

You have to do three things really well to make a successful film. You have to tell a compelling story that has a story that is unpredictable, that keeps people on the edge of their seat where they can't wait to see what happens next. You then populate that story with really memorable and appealing characters. And then, you put that story and those characters in a believable world, not realistic but believable for the story that you're telling.

There’s never a wrong idea. You just keep throwing stuff out and inevitably there are elements of different things that inspire a character or environment.

I love movies that make me cry, because they're tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards "How did they do that?"

Animation is the one type of movie that really does play for the entire audience. Our challenge is to make stories that connect for kids and adults.

Every single Pixar film, at one time or another, has been the worst movie ever put on film. But we know. We trust our process. We don't get scared and say, 'Oh, no, this film isn't working.'

You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone. It has to be the story and the characters.

People who get into animation tend to be kids. We don't have to grow up. But also, animators are great observers, and there's this childlike wonder and interest in the world, the observation of little things that happen in life.

I believe in the nobility of entertaining people and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours of their busy lives.

Sunday, for me, is all about being home with the family with no plans.

It’s so important to create in your own voice, to hold onto what makes you unique, and have faith in your vision.

I just devoured all of his [Buster Keaton’s] films because his sense of comic timing was amazing. He’s the closest a human being has ever come to a cartoon character. And I was just amazed at his sense of character and timing, the humor. It's all just so…sophisticated, even when you watch it today.

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.

A good part of my leadership skills is crafted from learning from experiences early in my career that were not positive experiences.

People have a real love of looking at small worlds - something inside them is innately attracted to that 'miniature' realm.

At Pixar, after every movie we have postmortum meetings where we discuss what worked and what didn't work.

Animation is the only thing I ever wanted to do in my whole life. I have no desire for live-action or anything else.

The more we all help each other, the more we all benefit. So go out there. Help others.

Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium.

I believe in research you cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what's real.

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.

I think the painted backgrounds in animations are absolutely stunningly beautiful. There's something really special about this medium. I don't believe audiences have grown past it. I think what audiences love is to be entertained-thoroughly, deeply entertained, and that's what I've always set out to do.

Walt Disney had always tried to get more dimension in his animation and when I saw these tapes, I thought, This is it! This is what Walt was waiting for! But when I looked around, nobody at the studio at the time was even halfway interested in it.

Directing is one of my favourite things to do because I love telling stories and I love working with the individual artists and it's something that I really missed.

I've got Disney blood running through my veins.

The spy genre is something I loved.It also extends to the bad guy because I think, to me, what I love the most about the spy genre is when you have a great bad guy. What makes a great bad guy, to me, is the logic. What he's about has to make sense to me, that if I was in his shoes, yeah, right, that makes sense.

I quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second.

My father pulled into Pearl Harbor four days after the bombing, and he said, everything was still burning. He said they never told the public how bad it was. It was really bad.

There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them.

Every technology that comes into filmmaking is first a gimmick. Think about sound with 'The Jazz Singer' or the first colour or surround sound - it takes a while for filmmakers to understand how to use it.

You need others. Too often people think that being unique means being isolated, and being a great artist means coming up with genius ideas out of nowhere. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

You make a movie to entertain audiences. That's why you make a movie. The product sales is because people love the characters, and to me, that is a testament to how our movie has become so ingrained in family's homes all around the world and that's why I make movies.

I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career.

Slice open one of my veins and cartoons will pour out; open another vein and you'll get a flood of motor oil.

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.

My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts

I think that the entertainment industry and the entertainment press tends to focus on opening weekend box office as a measure of the success of a film and I think the true success is out there in people's homes and how much they absolutely love these characters.

Pixar films are not realistic. They are believable for the worlds we are creating.

I'm the biggest fan of animation. I love the history of animation, I know it well.