The technology is roughly the same as far as the animation is done by hand. What has evolved, I would say, is that because of having computers, especially the Adobe Premier system, our animatic shooting is much quicker.

First animatic testing that we would have to do if we shot on film now is all through computers, and that allows much quicker pencil tests. You do some sketches, you can see the results in seconds, shoot it on the camera and go, "Oh, that animation's going to work."

So that's the biggest thing that's happened in that respect, you can test your animation much quicker and therefore you can do more animation, or more improved animation, much quicker.

The second part is [computer painting]. Most other shows have made the switch years ago, because after the Little Mermaid, all the films from Disney were computer painted. We only went with computer painting last year, and that has been a boon. We waited for some other systems [to come along], and in some ways it's a good thing we waited because we really have a good system now. No bugs, and there's nothing to worry about.

Are you a lover of the technology?

Yes, I'm a big fan of the computer technology, of 3D animation. I love what you can do enhancing 2D animation with 3D properties. We've done that too, in a couple of episodes. We've had some mechanical things that are hard to draw that we've done on the computer. Or at least worked out and then they were hand-traced, but the movement was worked out on the computer.