CinemaTech’s Scott Kirsner has posted a video interview with animator M dot Strange, whose feature We Are The Strange screened at Sundance this year. Strange is using YouTube as a major attention-getter for his work; he tells Kirsner that the site give him the opportunity “to create brand evangelists, crazy super-fanboys…that have the power of 1,000 regular people.” Some other highlights:

On the source of his pseudonym: “Before, I was making films under a different name, and people would see them and say, “I don’t know, it’s kind of strange.” So I had to put it in my name to make it obvious, so that people cannot say, ‘Oh that’s strange’ — it’s supposed to be, that’s the guy’s name.”

On his “Film Skool” series of lectures on YouTube: “I didn’t go to film school, but from what people are telling me, there are students who are actually at NYU right now, who watch my videos, because I talk about things like inspiration, and having a cause…so it’s like intangible stuff. It’s about how to be an artist and be creative and keep going in a world that constantly doubts you.”

On not fitting into traditional distribution models: “At Sundance, it was pretty much like, there was this build-up, and then once a large population of 50-year-old people walked out and asked for their money back, that pretty much scared all the distributors.”

And that’s just the first seven minutes. The whole thing is worth a look–and I love the funky, 70s-porn intro music.