Movies

He's won an Oscar for his short film about an old bunny. He's directed big films (Ice Age and Robots) and just finished producing another (Horton Hears a Who!). He's been a teacher and a high-tech entrepreneur. But what brings Chris Wedge to Dallas this weekend adds a line to his already impressive résumé: He's the recipient of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival's Texas Avery Animation Award.

On Friday afternoon at Reel FX Creative Studios in Deep Ellum he reminisced about a cartoon that Mr. Avery made in which the animals, "scatter in their own interesting ways."

"I think a tiger starts with his tail and eats himself, and a kangaroo gets so freaked out that it jumps into its own pouch and disappears," the 51-year-old animator said. "I would struggle to try to understand why that wouldn't just work. And I don't know, it was my introduction to cartoon physics that never left. The potential for anything to happen in animation was there. That's the biggest thing."

He also says that Mr. Avery's "crazy and chaotic" cartoons made an impression on him that seems contradictory to today's 'toon world. "They were like dreams or hallucinations where anything could happen at any moment. That seems a far cry from what animation has become in this age of big business and cutting-edge technology.

"You think about the environment those shorts were created in. There was very little pressure for those things to be anything but hilarious. I happen to work in an environment where there is a lot of pressure to operate within a very demanding business model. But maybe I'm just talking as someone who's seen what's behind the curtain. And I probably shouldn't underestimate how difficult it was to put those films together. But they sure feel carefree."

Mr. Wedge will pick up his award at 2 p.m. today at Victory Plaza, followed by a screening of Ice Age.