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Trained at Sheridan College in Ontario, Toronto-born Robert Walker has been with Disney since the opening of its Florida studio in 1989. He worked on films such as The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and Mulan. Brother Bear marks his directing debut. Robert Walker is occasionally known as Bob.

You must have been well into production when Ice Age came out. Given that it broadly shares the same setting and similar themes did that cause you any problems?

We were told there was a cave painting scene and a glacier scene. But to me those are icons of the period that the movie is set in. What else are you going to do? And we were so far removed from when Ice Age came out that we didn't think it would be a problem.

The voices are recorded first on an animated film, aren't they?

They are, and they're usually recorded individually although we paired up Jeremy Suarez [who voices Koda] and Joaquin Phoenix [Kenai] once. But more usually we record the cast and put it together in the studio. If we haven't got we want then we go back to them.

It must be tricky casting the voices, because some actors are presumably better at working in this way than others...

We actually went through a horrible time trying to cast Kenai. We brought in over 100 young men from Hollywood to audition for the part, but couldn't find someone we really liked. Gladiator was out at the time - Joaquin Phoenix was becoming quite well known and we thought it would be great to get him. We knew that Kenai was going through such an emotional rollercoaster through the movie so we needed a really strong actor to carry that, and he's got those skills. And we found Jeremy because he came in to audition for Finding Nemo. We listened to his tapes from that before casting him.

The animation is informed by the vocal performance, but how much does somebody like Jeremy influence the type of character that Koda will be?

When we first met him he was talking a mile a minute, and we thought that was cool - that we should put that in the movie. They had a big jar of these gourmet jelly beans in the studio, and he knew what every single one was. At the time we had Koda developed to a point, but when he came it just really came together. Jeremy is Koda, there's no doubt about it.

Disney have developed a tradition of making straight-to-video sequels of its animated hits, or tv programmes using some of the more popular characters. Will that be the case with Brother Bear?

We've already heard pitches for a sequel, and I think that's great. It keeps the characters alive, so long as it's a great story. And I'm sure that the moose characters, Rutt and Tuke, will have a life of their own in some form or other too.