I'm a lover of the great adventure films of the 1980s: 'Goonies,' 'E.T.,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' 'Star Wars.'

The Smurfs - and they're this way in Peyo's comics as well - do have a rubbery indestructibility about them. They can get bruised & battered. But they then just sort of bounce back very quickly, like those classic cartoon characters Wiley Coyote and Tom & Jerry.

Animation tends to have several different writers who serve different functions. I think, on a lot of animated features, there are a lot of writers who don't get credited. It's the policy at Disney, for instance, in deciding who gets credit. It depends on the writer's contract, so many things.

Every animated film that I've worked on - whether it was as a story artist or as Head of Story or even as director - where we originally started out with our story and where we eventually ended up were often very different places.

The health industry, the fitness industry, was really starting to pick up. This was around the mid 80's.

When you feel the burn, that's when you know you're doing an exercise correctly. If you're doing 20 crunches, and you're not struggling, make an adjustment so they're harder to do. Don't cheat yourself. If it isn't burning, you're not getting stronger.

As obesity creeps into preschools, and hypertension and type II diabetes become pediatric problems for the very first time, the case for starting preventive health care in the cradle has become too compelling to keep ignoring.

Most aid agencies do not even consider proposals to treat mental health problems; those that do think of it as a minor player, overshadowed by the pressing need to save lives by treating physical illness.