The 100 best animated movies: animators and filmmakers, Q to Z

“Prince Achmed is one of the first animated features ever, and it’s still stunning. Silhouette animation magic. Fehérlófia is a film that’s incredible with color. Raw, beautiful, cel-painted, it’s narrative and abstract at the same time.”

“I show Svankmajer’s Alice a lot when I’m teaching. I find it amazing for its exquisite camera and deep understanding of myth and dream, while still being true to the story. I became an animator after seeing Yellow Submarine, and fell in love with George Dunning’s experimental work. Toy Story opened up a new way to tell a story. It made young people think animation was new and special. James and the Giant Peach changed the way we think of stop-motion. Something had to move away from drawing just to bring n a new way of telling a story with a different perspective on space.”

“Yes, I know Snow White is kind of corny, but it was the film I saw as a child that first sucked me into the world of animation. I could put any one of the early Disney oeuvre here instead—Pinocchio, Peter Pan,Cinderella. Or Fantasia, which is infamously uneven, but I don’t care. It featured the work of my first animation hero, Preston Blair, with his dancing hippos. I first learned to animate from Blair’s $1.50 how-to book. The Incredibles is my favorite Pixar movie, because of its 1950s vision-of-the-future sets, just as promised by the Ford Times when I was a kid (a magazine for Ford automobile owners); hats off to Brad Bird, the funniest man, who added bite to Pixar. Tubby the Tuba was so bad that it inspired all the rest.”