Milt Kahl.

NC: And was anyone mentoring you at the time?

BB: Nope, not through that first film. There wasn't much in the way of information about making animation at the time, but I had gotten a very simple little book that Disney had sold at Disneyland that had a few good tips, and a book that Preston Blair had done that was really my bible. But I had to learn by watching animation and by doing. You can see me learning animation in that first film. By the end of it the character's design had improved quite a bit and the animation was fairly assured. But I didn't have a teacher until after the film brought me to the attention of Disney studios. Then they had Milt Kahl mentor me. So I had the surreal experience of having to figure it out on my own as best I could to being instructed by one of the best animators in the history of the medium.

NC: You received a scholarship by Disney to attend California Institute of the Arts and fellow student and future Pixar Co-Founder John Lasseter and you became friends. Obviously your relationship continued to be cultivated over the years. At the time, did you and John map out your future careers together, or did you and he just hook up later on?

BB: I not only met John Lasseter at Cal Arts, but also John Musker, Henry Selick, Darrell Van Citters -- who has his own company, Renegade Animation, now. Jerry Rees and others there too. We all had a passion for the medium and a desire to create the kind of films that had inspired us, but I can't say that we mapped our careers together. I left school to work at Disney while Lasseter stayed and made some great student films. I had been fired by Disney by the time John got there. He went to work for George Lucas and I went to work for Steven Spielberg, and we kept casually in touch. I was flabbergasted by Toy Story, which I thought was brilliant and called John to tell him so. He started talking to me about joining Pixar while I was doing Iron Giant ... and things went from there.

Family Dog is a fan favorite.

NC: You were the creator (writer, director and co-producer) of the Family Dog episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories. How did that come about?

BB: When I got fired from Disney for "rocking the boat," I was at a crossroads. Disney was really the only game in town if you wanted to do full animation and I had definite differences with their creative direction. It was unfortunate because there was really no other place to do top-quality stuff, so I risked spending my own money to do a little test film of ideas that I wanted to do in animation and see if I could get anyone interested in producing. The test film was called "A Portfolio of Projects" and it had several ideas for animated films large and small. The big project was an animated adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit, and one of the small projects was Family Dog. I took the film to Spielberg, and after a long time he got around to seeing it and paid me a small amount of money to storyboard it. I hired Tim Burton, who had designed the characters for the original test reel, to draw the boards for a couple of weeks. I finished the boards in Tim's style, and Steven really liked it. But I was pitching Family Dog as a theatrical short, and ultimately Steven felt that there was no viable economic model for that. It wasn't until several years later (when I had written a live-action script for Amazing Stories that Steven liked) that Steven suggested doing several Family Dog cartoons as a single Amazing Stories episode. And that's how we made it.

NC: What was it like working with Steven Spielberg?

BB: It was great. Not only was Steven one of my favorite filmmakers, but he was powerful enough to clear space that allowed us creative freedom. There were something like 44 episodes of Amazing Stories, many of which were directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis, Clint Eastwood and, of course, Spielberg himself ... but our episode was the only negative pickup, meaning that they gave us the money and the deadline and it was up to us to figure out how to make it happen. That was an amazing opportunity, simultaneously frightening and exhilarating. I'm proud to say we came in on time and on budget, we were one of the cheapest episodes and one of the highest rated. We also had the first digitally recorded soundtrack on network television. Looking back, our young crew was filled with an astonishing number of people who did great things afterward.

NC: How did that influence your career?

BB: Well it brought me some opportunities, only some of which I was smart enough to capitalize on. But sadly, I had to spend many more years in what is called "development hell" before I got the chance to direct a movie.