Aaron Simpson

What is your name?
Aaron Simpson

What would you say has been your primary job in animation?
Producer, primarily of animated pilots for the kids realm. I’ve also been a producer and a development lead for online animated shorts.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Johnny Test – I produced the pilot. Also the Gay Robot pilot for Adam Sandler and Comedy Central.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I was a cameraman on Love Connection. I was pretty terrible at this job, and was probably going to get fired the week after I quit.

How did you become interested in animation?
In the early 80s, I saw Vinton’s 1974 short Closed Mondays at a summer school class about short films (I also saw Hardware Wars), and it inspired me to start producing my own stop-motion shorts.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I grew up outside of Detroit, Michigan. After a very short career producing TV spots here in Los Angeles, I found a distaste for Continue reading

Jesse Aclin

What is your name and your current occupation?
Jesse Aclin. Freelance Character designer currently working on a project with Reel FX.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Crazy ey? well, working in the toy design field was a bit crazy for me.. I also had a gig where it was my job to create label art by moving around existing images and changing the layout based on where a certain stores price tag and logo go. That was fun!

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Working with Reel FX on “Turkeys”, as a character designer. It was my first real gig doing character design, so it was sort of like a dream come true for me and I got to design a lot of characters! Right now I’m fortunate enough to be working with them again on “Book of Life”. I’ve worked on some fun TV commercial spots with Nathan Love, designing characters. Those are cool because I get to have a heavy influence on the style. Working with Titmouse was a heck of a lotta fun and an amazing learning experience as it was my first animation gig. I was hired to work as a character layout artist on Disney’s Motor City. I ended up working on a bunch of projects there. Good folks there, and I learned what it is to be a professional working in the biz.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from a town called Goshen, NY. It’s about 1.5 hours outside of city. My path into the animation biz is a bit of a strange and round about one. I always drew sort of well and I knew I wanted a career in the arts. So, taking my fathers advice I went into college for advertising because Continue reading

Tony Merrithew


What is your name and your current occupation?
Tony Merrithew, animator, sculptor, visual development artist.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I delivered liquid oxygen to people with breathing problems. I drove a tractor on a tree farm.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I worked as an animator on the first California raisins commercials as well as the Noid.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
From Portland oregon. Got a job by walking into Continue reading

Neal Warner

What is your name and your current occupation? 
I’m Neal Warner and I am currently directing a live stage show called Rock & Roll Rehabwhich features a live band playing in sync with animated music videos projected on a large screen above the stage. It’s been an ambition of mine since I was in Junior High School and saw the re-release of Walt Disney’s Fantasia. It recently finished a run at the Hayworth Theater on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Before I went to work as an inbetweener at Hanna-Barbera during my summer vacation between graduating high school and starting college I was a published cartoonist in the “Free Press” and in “underground comix”. Ironically, the only job I ever had after creating the underground comic character Pizza Fella and starting full time in the Animation Industry was as a pizza delivery guy while attending San Diego State.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I wrote and directed the John Lennon themed stage show, A Day In His Life, which was represented by the William Morris Agency and followed that with the Rock & Roll Rehabshow, both of which include a lot of animation as part of the multimedia projection. I published PaperCuts, The Illustrated Lyrics Magazine in the 80s which included a two song record insert and featured the songs’ lyrics in comic book form, I produced several animated music videos, one of which won the Gold Plaque in Music Video at the Chicago International Film Festival and was included in a screening of “The World’s Best Animated Music Videos” at the First Los Angeles Animation Celebration and I produced The Tooner’s Trip Disc enhanced CD and The Tooners’ Rocktasia CD (available on iTunes). Those are my favorite “pet” projects but I’m also proud of my work on The Heavy Metal Movie, Ducktails The Movie, the two Rugrats Movies, The Puff The Magic Dragon TV special and some of the many TV commercials and series I’ve worked on either as an animator, an assistant animator, a director or as a timing director for studios such as Disney TV, Klasky-Csupo, Marvel, Murakami-Wolf, Filmmation, Film Roman, Sony, Universal, Fred Wolf Films and many others.

How did you become interested in animation? 
I was a cartoonist whose work was published in my junior high school newspaper, the cover of the yearbook and animated my first film, The Jogger, in the ninth grade. In high school I was the school’s staff “political” cartoonist as well as a paid contributor to professional underground comics and in college I was elected into Sigma Delta Chi, the Society Of Professional Journalists for my political cartoons in the CSUN campus paper. Although Continue reading

David M. Breaux Jr.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbNaM74Znms
What is your name and your current occupation?
David M. Breaux Jr. Character / Creature Animator

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
First job was in a framing shop….boring more than crazy… but I did do two summers working as a sculptor one summer was making Mardi Gras floats… the other summer was making huge Mardi Gras themed sculptures for Casinos: Harrah’s, Luxor, and MGM Grand.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Garfield….yes Garfield, it was my first film…I worked on the postvis then was hired by Rhythm & Hues as an animator for the film. It was the most character work I had ever done at that point. Till the sequal. Tron Legacy..dream come true though I wished I had been on the show longer and had more shots. Real Steel was quite fun, I learned a lot about dealing with mocap at an entirely different level on that show.

How did you become interested in animation?
I had always liked cartoon growing up, and was always watching monster movies, Godzilla, King Kong, any Ray Harryhausen films, really anything that was Continue reading

Hayley Dwan


What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Hayley Dwan. I currently work as a full time print and designer of t-shirts and hoodies at yourdesign.co.uk. In my spare time I do freelance animation and illustration work, hoping to one day fully break into the animation industry.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
The only other job that I’ve had apart from my current occupation was as a dispenser in a pharmacy….not so crazy I know! I’ve always quite fancied wearing a pizza box to advertise dominoes or something though!

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I think during work experience at companies like Milky Tea and Factory Trans media. I was so grateful to be given the opportunity to be a part of their projects such as advertising campaigns, character designs for series pitches and storyboard work. I learnt so much from these companies and working within the studio, therefore my finished pieces of work where something I was very proud of!

How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve always loved cartoons (and still do…..I’m a big kid!) I think it was from age 8 that I began my love for drawing. I would draw everything I could see! I would sit in front of the tv and draw characters from the cartoons. I then began keeping my own little books of characters I had created and little stories to go with them. When I discovered

 

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