100 Quotes by Travis Knight

Sometimes the theme of the film is something that comes down to the way you designed the film - that you're saying something about the world. And it's one of the things that I think animation can do, in a way that other forms of filmmaking can't do. Because every single thing you see has got to be designed and created.

I know I have exacting standards.

You see it in the stuff I've done at Laika: I've always tried to make movies that have an artful blend of darkness and light, intensity and warmth. That have a thinking brain and a strong beating heart at the centre of it.

I won't say which one, but one shot on 'Kubo' took two months to get the expression right. It's ridiculous on some level.

If you can connect with the audience emotionally, that's potent storytelling.

Rather than a taste for the macabre, I like the full range of human emotion in a story, which means darkness and light. It means warmth, but it also potentially means scares.

It's a very difficult thing to adapt a piece of existing material into film.

Within a safe environment, the theater, you can have a big ride, big ups and downs, intensity, warmth, humanity, laughs, tears - you want that full range of emotion.

In any piece of art, the artist pours themselves into it. It becomes a reflection of who they are and what they believe. That's what it has to be. Otherwise it's just a product.