Creators Society Animation Podcast

We’re in for a treat as we dive into the world of Sony’s new feature, GOAT with director Tyree Dilihay.  This film - this was fun. I really enjoyed it. And I know there are a bunch of kids out there who did too. And that’s great to see and to hear of kids who are wanting to go to the theaters to see an original film.  Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sports fan, so I was fascinated by this project...

From Robot Chicken to Buddy Thunderstruck to quirky shorts and highly polished commercials, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is a powerhouse of ideas and creativity. We sat down with Eric Towner to talk through his career, and the creative process and idea machine at stop motion house Stoopid Buddy.  The hand made feel and aesthetic of top motion is one part of the industry that is not going to be replicate...

If you’re interested in animation and haven’t seen The Unloved, a Christmas film for French supermarket Intermarché, then you probably haven’t been online in the past couple of weeks. Love for this piece has spread far and wide, way beyond its intended French audience. With hundreds of millions of views across various platforms, it’s a remarkable achievement.  What fascinated me is that the ads th...

DreamWorks is back with another dose of action packed non stop animated fun and we're back with director Pierre Perifel to talk all things Bad Guys 2. With only 3 short years between releases, this chat dives into everything from concept to scope to rhythm and pacing to lensing and more! We hope you enjoy this one. If you didn't hear my conversation with Pierre after the first Bad Guys,...

On a recent trip to Kidscreen I had the opportunity to sit down and discuss distribution with Alison Taylor from Aardman and Ed Galton from Cake. With our industry undergoing so much change, I wanted to hear what it was like on the distribution side of the business, and how these two companies, with very different beginnings and operations were navigating the change.  I also added some thoughts on...

This episode is a must-listen for anyone developing an original series and wondering how they'll get it off the ground. A combination of passion, perseverance, and a great partnership of the right people made the special sauce to get Stan & Gran into production. Based on an idea Jon Mason had a whopping 12 years ago, perseverance looms large here. His partnership with Natalie Llewellyn wa...

The Wild Robot is here - a film I and a lot of the industry have been looking forward to getting their eyes on since we first saw the teaser.  Most of the major animated feature hits of late have been sequels and spin-offs, so when I got a glimpse of The Wild Robot from DreamWorks, I was very excited. First of all, I love robots of course. But there is something about the fish-out-of-water scenari...

Survive til 25 is a term thrown about a lot lately, but it got me thinking that it's August, and perhaps we need to think more about longer-term survival. So this is the first in a series of Survive Beyond '25 episodes looking at various parts of that equation, from business to innovation to mental health and creativity. In this episode, Rick Mischel returns to chat about the general sta...

How low can you go with a CG feature budget to create a very entertaining, high-quality-looking animated film? Listen in to this one to find out as I dive into the deal-making and production of The Amazing Maurice with Producer Andrew Baker. Based on a Terry Pratchett book, The Amazing Maurice looks like it came out of a much bigger studio environment. It has a great voice cast, quality effects, a...

'The old shool house', 'speeider' and 'the sun is warming up' were just some of the memorable lines quoted by my kids for years from the original Megamind movie originally released back in 2010 - a very different animation and media landscape than exists today. The movie was fresh and fairly successful, but gained a cult following in the years after its release. Fast...

Welcome to our second annual Kidscreen Conversations episode. I headed to San Diego, not Miami this year for the first west coast Kidscreen. As always, it was a great event, although the sun decided to skip it this year! Our guests this year are Rob Doherty, a consultant with great insight into the industry and founder of Festivus, an animation org that parallels the Creators Society in some ways...

Welcome to the 4th season of the Creators Society Animation Podcast. We're thrilled to have made it this far! As you know, our business is changing all the time, rapidly. But that means that there is more to talk about than ever, so we're going to be talking to different people and discussing different topics of change and importance. Today we chat with Sean Charmatz and Peter McCown fro...

Today we have a treat as I chat with Mike Lasker of Sony ImageWorks. I don't know about you but I was blown away by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - and actually when it finished, I sat there with so many questions - mainly around the theme of 'how the hell did they do that?!' I have long had a fascination with render styles that veered away from realism, playing with toon shad...

In today's episode, we have a conversation with Sandy Wax - a former Discovery, Disney, and Sprout executive. Sandy is delightfully curious, and that curiosity really paved the way for so many things - from her interest in research, to how that ties into content development and marketing and branding - and what led to her becoming CEO of Sprout for over over 10 years.  Branding is something w...

For this episode, we're breaking down The Inventor with an 'Anatomy of an Indie Stop Motion Film'. We first had Jim Capobianco on the show almost two years ago! In that chat, he talked about the stop motion feature project he'd embarked upon. With the Inventor releasing in theatres on Friday, September 15th, we thought doing a deep dive and breaking down how it made it to scree...

If you're looking for some career inspiration, look no further than this episode with guest Bobby Chiu. Bobby's career is an example of tenacity, purpose, and a drive to not only be a great artist but to be great FOR artists. We start out early in his career journey and talk through all the obstacles he encountered before his big break, which was really a big gamble that turned into a bi...

In this episode, I got to chat with Kirk DeMicco and Faryn Pearl, the director and co-director of DreamWorks Animation's latest film, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. As with most films, what we see onscreen is only part of the story. If you look at the math, Kirk's last directorial project was Vivo, released around 2 years ago, which means Ruby was a sprint from when he came aboard - pun i...

In this episode, we chat with Gary H. Lee, a layout, pre-viz, and cinematography guru who has also directed a couple of amazing shorts. Gary has an amazing career story that we know you'll enjoy, from working on one of the biggest film franchises of all time at age 19 to working with Ang Lee on Life of Pi, he has an incredible amount of experience and insight. We discuss his career, his thoug...

In 2022 Animation Magazine celebrated 35 years, so I sat down with Jean Thoren, a serial encourager, to talk about her's, and the magazine's journey. Jean and Animation Magazine have seen so much change in the industry over the past 35 years, and we chat about how it all got started when Pixar was emerging, Disney was changing, and the evolution of animation from being pigeonholed for ki...

Sometimes you see artwork that leaps off the screen - almost like visual click bait! Joseph Feinsilver's concept art did that to me when I spotted it on Instagram, so I wanted to chat to him about his story, his process and his work on Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. Joe shares his story about breaking into the industry just out of college which is really inspiring if you're painting day a...

This week's episode is a bit of a departure from our regular format, as I chat with 3 people from Kidscreen Summit in Miami and share some of my own thoughts. First up is Tom Bancroft, a well-known and very accomplished animator who worked at Disney for many years and recently started his own studio, Pencillish. Tom was visiting Kidscreen for the first time, so it was a great opportunity to s...

Getting to have these conversations is such a treat for me, and I really enjoyed getting to have this conversation with Jonas Rivera from Pixar. After starting as an intern on the original Toy Story, rising up to producer on UP , Inside Out , Toy Story 4 and helping to shape Soul , Jonas has 4 Oscars under his belt and is now Executive Vice President of Production at Pixar.  That would be a great...

This episode is a chat with Julie Kane-Ritsch, Talent Manager and Head of Animation at The Gotham Group. It's a fascinating chat that shows that managers and agents have all kinds of paths into the industry, and Julie's journey is really cool.  When Hanna Barbera's shorts program produced 12 shorts, with 4 of them being Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Dexters Lab, and the Powerpuff G...

In 2022 Sony Pictures Animation celebrated its 20th birthday, and Kristine Belson has been president for around 8 of those years, overseeing the industry-changing hit "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", and a growing number of film-maker led projects with varying styles and storytelling techniques.  Join me in this conversation with Kristine as we chat about her career, which started in...

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish is fresh off a Golden Globes nomination and being widely praised - along with a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes as I write this. Join us as we jump into a nearly hour-long chat with Director Joel Crawford and Co-Director Januel Mercado. These guys were so fun to chat with and they were very generous with their time in a week where they probably did a hundred interv...