Rather than exploring realistic animation and special effects (which are done so well with a cast of hundreds), I`ve come to realize that I prefer good old 2-D animation with a minimal number of props.

After all, it`s only me.

Deprived, so to speak, I`m forced to use my ingenuity and imagination to make the simulacrum of reality in a cardboard box, the choreography of motion in restricted landscapes.

Going through phases where I`m sick of color, I try to make the sensory impact with monochrome only. Then finally starved, become color saturated again.

Tending toward minimalism at times, the topology of one foot after the other is almost enough. How we can walk at all seems to be the most amazing thing once that obsession starts.

Then veering toward something more complex like a beginning to an end, I try to pare it down to the essentials and realize that there are, after all, only a few stories to tell.

So I often end up- against my best intentions- with a series of gestures. My own little Noh drama. The idea of suggestiveness and innuendo, the kind of pointing where a short sequence can be an introduction to a story that you don`t have to tell because you`ve already made the punchline.

I want the best possible synthesis between simplicity and an interesting movement in space, where reciprocity between two opposing actions is as nuanced as I can make it. And not only in the visuals- the audio too, whether abstract or more thematic, has to be carefully integrated with gesture or else the whole thing falls apart in tedious illustration.

Space, time, tempo: if you get that right, you show the vitality of life.

I like that you can do this in a cartoon, but life is funny that way.