Anyone who knows me, knows I don't walk away from a commitment, but I had a commitment to myself. Yes, there were times Nickelodeon made it more difficult than it needed to be, but there were also times they made it easier.
I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.
I think cheese smells funny, but I feel bananas "are" funny. I'm assuming Swamp told the whole story of the executives seriously asking us to replace the banana with cheese because they thought it was funnier.
I was shocked. They were going to give me money to make this really odd show? Well, I still had little thought of it going to series, but I thought it was great that my next short film was going to be paid for.
Since this was the first and only series I had ever produced, I was unaware of what the "Normal" environment was for a studio. I tried to run it as I did in my SF studio.
Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from struggle. I disagree with that, because truely doing your art is success, whether you make money from it or not.
Sometimes a serendipitous reaction occurs when a network asks you if you have any ideas for a series, at a time when your creative flow is working in that direction.
Sometimes things just click. The one contribution I tried to do, was shield the staff from the corporate politics that occur on any show. But yes, we all got along very well.
When an executive walked on our floor, it was at their own risk. As far as what others thought of working for me, I know I was very tough at times, and would storm down the hall after watching some bad animation from Korea. But overall, I feel we had a good time.
