I grew up on Shane movie and my mother loves it and I've watched it hundreds of times.
I love sight gags and broad stuff, but you can get to such a subtle degree, especially with CG animation.
I went to the archives to see what Dumbo work there was, not for current film, but just for my love of animation. And I couldn't believe all the artwork the guys had done to find this universal empathy to Dumbo. There was one drawing where they used his ears as a sign: "Eat at Joes!" These guys were continually searching and digging to see what that is.
One of the first things was I made Arlo [the Apatosaurus] a younger character. And then when I was that age (around 11 or 12), what was I like? Sweat pants, turtle-neck kid; didn't know anything about fashion or style, the culture of the world. I was very sheltered.
