Travis Knight

“One of the things that gives stop-motion its inherent magic is that you're seeing something imperfect and thus undeniably human - because it's made by human hands.”

“Artists are neurotic and hypersensitive, and they tend to focus on granular details, sometimes at the expense of the big picture. I've gotten better at the big picture over the years.”

“Stop-motion has limitations, any form of filmmaking does, but stop-motion has a lot of limitations.”

“Commingling keenly felt emotion, madcap humor, and retina-bursting visuals, 'Missing Link' is a kaleidoscopic cinematic experience unlike any other.”

“If you look at films like the Rankin/Bass specials, those sorts of things, there's nothing inherently creepy about any of those, in fact those are fairly warm.”

“You throw a rock in Hollywood and you're going to hit someone in the film industry.”

“When you allow an animator to focus on a portion of the film and really understand the arc of the scene, what's happening with the characters, they can make choices all along the way that reinforce the main points of the scene. They really get to know what's happening.”

“I'm a huge fan of what Marvel did, it's no surprise for anyone to know that as a child I was a huge fan of comics.”

“Laika's films aim to promote thought, feeling, and connectivity through art, inspired by our shared humanity. We're deeply gratified that the spirit of our work has resonated so strongly with audiences around the world.”

“Coming from the world of animation, every single line counts; every single gesture counts. You put thought into every single one of those things and the way a frame is composed.”

“When 'Buffy' was on the air, I recorded every single episode on my TiVo. I'm pretty sure my DVR thought I was a fourteen year-old girl. Whatever. The show was incredible. It refused to be pigeonholed.”

“When I became a father, I saw what passed for family entertainment. So much of it was vapid. I wanted to make things that mattered.”

“We had so many firsts on 'Coraline' that I couldn't quite see where we'd go from there, but for 'ParaNorman' we developed this 'skewed naturalism' that marries a lot of intricate detail with a more cinematic approach, then just built on all that and pushed those techniques even further, so we can tell our stories that much more effectively.”

“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.”

“Ultimately, the goal is to be on an annual cycle - releasing a film every year.”

“I spent a lot of time alone when I was a kid, I climbed trees, hopped creek beds, read, watched movies, I'd make stories, make films.”

“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.”

“My brother and I had unresolved things. I just wish I could have had one final conversation with him.”

“We used to go to movies to see stories about ourselves. It would transport us to new worlds and we'd see aspects of ourselves reflected back.”

“I was athletic growing up and that was, of course, a big part of my household, but it wasn't something that I was necessarily passionate about.”