I'm not a believer in putting designers off in an ivory tower. They need to have a voice at the table so they can identify where and why design can make a difference. We also need to understand the business issues. If we don't make our numbers this quarter, we don't earn the right to do something cool the next time.

Chuck Jones

Categorized in : Voice Differences Ivory Tower

If you start with character, you probably will end up with good drawings.

Chuck Jones

drawing ends character

The rules are simple. Take your work, but never yourself, seriously. Pour in the love and whatever skill you have, and it will come out.

Chuck Jones

love-yourself skills simple

All worthwhile endeavors are 90% work and 10% love, and only the love should show.

Chuck Jones

worthwhile endeavor should

You can't force inspiration. It's like trying to catch a butterfly with a hoop but no net. If you keep your mind open and receptive, though, one day a butterfly will land on your finger.

Chuck Jones

butterfly land inspiration

Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are.

Chuck Jones

who-we-are bugs want

Animation isn't the illusion of life; it is life

Chuck Jones

illusions-of-life animation illusion

Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out.

Chuck Jones

drawing artist way

Often Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

Chuck Jones

creativity hands art

An animator is an actor with a pencil.

Chuck Jones

animator pencils actors

In timing a film, we used to assume that sneaks move slowly. This was great for animators-thirty-six to forty-eight drawings for a single step-but it was sheer hell for the pace of the picture. So the rapid tiptoe was invented.

Chuck Jones

forty-eight drawing moving

The only time a wife listens to her husband is when he’s asleep.

Chuck Jones

only-time wife husband

Animation means to invoke life, not to imitate it.

Chuck Jones

invoke animation mean

You do not 'suffer' if you decide 'that's the way it is' rather than 'why is it this way?'

Chuck Jones

ifs suffering way

Once you have heard a strange audience burst into laughter at a film you directed, you realize what the word joy is all about.

Chuck Jones

laughter joy happiness

Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace. If you have a single-minded need for something, let it be the unusual, the esoteric, the bizarre, the unexpected.

Chuck Jones

esoteric ordinary needs

The whole essence of good drawing - and of good thinking, perhaps - is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be.

Chuck Jones

drawing essence thinking

An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players. Daffy Duck is to a Buck Rogers story what John McEnroe was to tennis. Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.

Chuck Jones

keys player character

All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.

Chuck Jones

drawing hundred thousand

Every great artist must begin by learning to draw with the single line, and my advice to young animators is to learn how to live with that razor-sharp instrument or art. An artist who comes to me with eight or ten good drawings of the human figure in simple lines has a good chance of being hired. But I will tell the artist who comes with a bunch of drawings of Bugs Bunny to go back and learn how to draw the human body. An artist who knows that can learn how to draw ANYTHING, including Bugs Bunny.

Chuck Jones

drawing simple art

Early experiences convinced me that animals can and do have quite distinct personalities.

Chuck Jones

convinced personality animal