Selick’s conceptual sketches would be a great treat on any DVD.

TJ: Where was the animation staged?

HS: This was all done in Marin County. An old friend of mine, Jim Morris, who ran ILM for years — he just stepped down — their stages were vacant because most effects at ILM are CG, so we got a great deal to go in and use the ILM motion control stages to do the show. It was the first time an outside show, a non-ILM project came in there. It was great. We needed everything they had to pull it off.

TJ: Did you step in front of the camera at all as an animator?

HS: No, not on this show. I’d do poses, sometimes, get out there and bend the thing — “Let’s find out what it can do.” Often I’d do sketches, storyboard things, but the main animator for two-thirds of the movie was Justin Kohn. He was fantastic. I’ve worked with him on most of my shows. And then Tim Hittle, you might know — his short film [The Potato Hunter, 1990] won an award — Tim came in as a second main animator. I’ve worked with these guys so long, we just talk about it, do some sketches, do a few tests. I never had done swimming things before, and that may look deceptively simple to the outsider. It’s actually pretty complex, how to come up with the swimming motion.

TJ: Did you have time to re-do things if Wes changed his mind, or were you down to the wire keeping on schedule?

HS: No, we were one of the only parts of the film that actually was under control and on time. We did re-do some shots. Concepts change. The little hand-lizard on Bill Murray’s hand — originally when we animated it, we had it look at Bill and then yawn. And it’s really beautiful, but Wes in piecing things together thought maybe it was a little too cartoony. So we re-did a handful of shots, and we kept everything available and ready to go again. But we finished at the very end of April, early May, so they had plenty of time.

The little lizard that crawls on Bill Murray’s hand is one of the only animated shots that had to be revamped.

TJ: Moving to the subject of your Will Vinton Studio projects — what’s Moongirl?

HS: Moongirl is an original idea that was conceived by a guy named Michael Berger at Vinton. They had an in-house competition to come up with an idea for short films. Moongirl’s going to be CG, the first all-CG film I’ve directed. They’re building a CG pipeline, although they plan to continue in stop-motion. They’re the co-producers of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. But Moongirl is — I’m trying to bring some of my sensibilities, give a different look to CG than people have seen. And it’s also an opportunity for us to learn about CG. If I want to use CG in the future, I’ll be a little more familiar with it. But it’s a beautiful story. It’s not at all a cartoon gag-oriented piece. It’s kind of slow going, because as I say, we’re building a pipeline. We’re going to finish that up in spring. It’ll probably be summer before it gets out to festivals.

TJ: Your short Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions and some of your MTV interstitials are available at the Vinton site. Is your 1981 short Seepage out there anywhere?

HS: You know, I haven’t put any effort into making that possible. I do think it would be a good idea to get all that stuff transferred digitally. Yeah, there’s no way to show that at this time.

TJ: On Fantastic Mr. Fox, the trades are saying Anderson is directing. What kind of job position do you see yourself in on that project?

HS: It’s definitely a Wes Anderson film, and at various times he’s asked me to direct it for him, and to co-direct — it hasn’t been worked out. He’s writing the thing with Noah, he’ll have a big hand in the look and the design of it, and would review story reels and animatics. But I don’t imagine he’d be a part of the day-to-day making of the film. He’d probably be off doing something else at that point.