It is no accident that I made Cartoon Town a simple little village - in many ways it mirrored my home town. And, yes, many of my puppet characters took on some of the more eccentric characteristics of people I knew there.
One of my favorite cartoon characters is Snoopy. I love the way he sits and lies on his kennel and contemplates the great things of life.
Weird, but sometimes I feel more like my cartoon character than I do Lizzie because she's a little more edgy and snappy.
The nice thing is that, at least in Los Angeles, I'm known as a character actor and I do auditions for other things besides just cartoon shows.
Honestly, at one time I though Babe Ruth was a cartoon character. I really did, I mean I wasn't born until 1961 and I grew up in Indiana.
I love thinking of cartoon characters feeling really real feelings. And I love to do that, not just as a fan, but as a creator, so if people want to look for those levels, they're actually there.
When you work on anything, you want to find the range of impulses - which ones get portrayed is another question, but you want to have that complexity and that fullness, even if you're playing a cartoon character.
Now we really like to put people in boxes. As men, we do it because we don't understand characters that aren't ourselves and we aren't willing to put ourselves in the skin of those characters and women, I think, terrify us. We tend not to write women...
My biggest regret is that I've assisted the media in making me into a cartoon character. I don't regret what has happened to me, but I regret the way I have dealt with it.
People just expect you to show up, be a cartoon character of yourself, take your money and go home. But don't screw up to the point where you're gonna be out of the picture.
You can take charge, kick ass, do whatever you have to do and it's okay. You can blow people up. These are things that are okay for cartoon characters to do.
I think that, ultimately, there are so many characters in G.I. Joe that even all the iterations - the comics and the different cartoons and everything - have been a big ensemble. Lots of crossing storylines and stuff.
It's all about being comfortable, being easy and having you be able to wear something and not having it wear you. It's classic. Every time I've tried to be bold and crazy, I feel like a Japanese animated cartoon character.
I'm a great admirer of cartoons, because I can't do cartoons.
My grandmother was probably the first person who I thought was beautiful. She was incredibly stylish, she had big hair, big cars. I was probably 3 years old, but she was like a cartoon character.
As a kid, I just loved cartoons. And as the credits went by, I'd study those names and then try to figure how I could get hired to do what Mel Blanc and Daws Butler did. Create all of these great voices for animated characters.
I love wearing the exact same thing all the time because I think it makes you like a cartoon character. They always wear the same outfit and everybody always remembers them for it, so I feel like I should do the same thing.
When you throw punches at actors, you stop, you pull it, and it looks like you pulled it. When you throw punches at cartoon characters, they are not there, so you can swing through. It looks like you really decked them.
Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.
Well, for one thing, the executives in charge at Cartoon Network are cartoon fans. I mean, these are people who grew up loving animation and loving cartoons, and the only difference between them and me is they don't know how to draw.
If you were to look at an old 'Betty Boop' cartoon or an 'Out of the Ink Well' animation, there are many things about 'Adventure Time' that really remind you of that, even though it doesn't look like any of those cartoons.
