Creators Society Animation Podcast

If you've been taking in all the animated features this year, you no doubt have The Bad Guys as one of your favorites. For me, it's one of my favorite films of the year, animated or not.  And it certainly has its own flavor, a flavor which is really fresh, reminiscent of great heist films, and infused with a lot of today's guest, director Pierre Perifel .  We chat about Pierre'...

I bumped into LP Vermette and Virginie Lavallée in Annecy this year and right away was intrigued by what they're doing. LP and Virginie are Canadian producers who have pivoted to focus on training producers in the industry. What is wonderfully refreshing is that aside from being super capable and experienced to teach other producers, they're taking the angle of wanting to turn out produc...

Daniel Ross has worked as a voice actor for many years and does a vast array of voices, including many legacy characters, and new ones, big and small, in various shows. We chatted about his journey into voice acting, and the craft. Getting started into acting is a challenge, so you'll love Daniel's story of how he landed a role in a transformers video game to kick off his career. Daniel...

In 2017, when the industry caught sight of the first teaser trailer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse , our collective jaws dropped. The rest is history of course as the movie went on to win just about every award imaginable. In this episode, I chat with Josh Beveridge , Head of Animation on Spider-Verse, and we talk through his career, all of which has been at Sony Pictures Imageworks , and h...

This week we were saddened to receive the news that long-time Pixar production designer Ralph Eggleston passed away after a long battle with cancer. I spoke with Ralph for one of our first episodes, so my instinct was to remember him by re-running that episode this week instead of what we had planned. I'm joined by long-time Pixar animator Shawn Krause, who has known Ralph, or Eggman as many...

Today's guest, Rick Mischel, walks us through his career as a producer and executive for renowned studios such as Sony Pictures Animation, Sony Imageworks, Rainmaker/Mainframe, and Bardel, offering some great advice along the way.  I first met Rick at my first Kidscreen event in Miami, a meeting we discussed at the beginning of this episode, and then ran into him at Annecy this year.  A humbl...

Skydance Animation’s first feature film Luck just dropped on AppleTV+, and we were able to chat with director Peggy Holmes this week about her career and the making of the film. Peggy was a delight to chat with and I thoroughly recommend this episode for anyone interested in taking steps toward directing - from wherever they are now! Being Skydance's first animated feature, they obviously wan...

In this episode we've got a double scoop of talented creators in Karen Disher and Sharon Bridgeman, who join me to chat through their careers. Karen and Sharon have recently joined the multi-talented crew that Brad Lewis and P.J. Gunsagar have been assembling at Spire Animation Studios. After glittering career journeys through major animation houses, Karen and Sharon were drawn to Spire’s cre...

In this episode, I chat with David Sheldon-Hicks, co-founder of Territory Studio. Territory Studio began as a screen graphics specialist studio; creating user interfaces for films like Prometheus, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers, continuing this work on more recent films such as The Batman, Dune, and Blade Runner 2049. Over the years Territory has grown while remaining independent, enabling...

This week I chat with Peter Demarest, compositing supervisor on Boba Fett and The Mandalorian, as well as working on some of the most iconic shots and movies for the past decade, such as The Avengers, Avatar, Jurassic World, and the Star Wars films. I saw Peter's reel a few weeks back and was just blown away, so wanted to reach out and chat to him, and here's that chat! Take a look at Pe...

Today's guest is Nancy Kanter, a producer and executive who didn't start out in animation or on an executive track - although I'm not sure exactly what an executive track is since so many people I speak to have non-linear career paths. Nancy began her career as an editor on feature films and documentaries spent a few years creating Sesame Street specials and wound up being an integr...

Aron Warner was the producer of DreamWorks' first CG animated feature, Antz. He then won the first ever academy award for an animated feature as the producer of Shrek, before going on to produce Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third, working with Jorge Gutierrez on The Book of Life and more recently, Wish Dragon. Before all this, Aron had a career in live action films, from horror films like Freddy’s D...

After studying at CalArts, Shawn Krause jumped almost straight into Pixar, where he stayed for many years, working on 15 Pixar features including the first two Toy Story films, Finding Nemo and Dory, Incredibles and Incredibles 2 and all three Cars films,  along with multiple shorts and other projects. Now he's made another leap, to Spire Animation Studios as Creative Director of Animation an...

When Kristen McGregor published an article at the start of the year on getting into kids media, I immediately wanted to chat with her on the podcast. So when I was in LA recently, we sat down to talk about her career and also her article. Kristen has worked as a writer, director, producer and exec at places like CBC, Sinking Ship, Nelvana and Apple TV+, so has plenty of experience across the board...

Spire Animation Studios is a new studio with some ambitious plans for combining high end features with realtime tech, but to do this they've assembled an all-star team of creatives. Michael Surrey, Creative Director of Story and Animation, is one of those all-stars, and the first of a few conversations with Spire creatives we'll have over the coming weeks. Michael's career started o...

Join me for this in depth conversation with Linda Simensky, discussing her incredible career, including adventures as an exec at Nick, Cartoon Network, PBS and her new gig at Duolingo as Head of Animation and Scripted Content at Duolingo. One of the many things Linda and I touched on was the lack of books about becoming a producer or an executive. If you want to become an artist or an animator, th...

If you could create a character design masterclass without any visuals, this would be it. Joe Moshier shares a wealth of knowledge about his process along with his path to becoming one of the best character designers in the business today. You've seen his work in films including The Hunchback of Notre Dame , The Emporer's New Groove, Bolt, the Dragons films, Boss Baby and recently Sony P...

Carlos Zaragoza's journey to production design in animation started out as a youngster in Madrid, and wove through fine art and live action, including working on Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. We walk through his entire career including key films, and touching on how sees the role of production design. Carlos has recently been nominated for an Annie for his work as production...

Genevieve won an Emmy as a producer for Amazon's first preschool show, Tumbleleaf.  Join me as we walk through her career as a writer, creator, producer, songwriter and voice actor, including her fascinating back story and great 'breaking into the industry' story.  We also talk about her latest project, the music driven Star Forest. Enjoy! Show Notes: Listen to Star Forest Star Fore...

Rex was there in the early days of CG, attending NYIT and joining PDI and working with Jim Henson, before animating on Toy Story and then joining DreamWorks. He was head of animation on all three Madagascar films, won a Sci-Tech Oscar for leading the design of DreamWorks animation software Premo. He then went on to found  Nimble Collective, along  with Scott LaFleur, Jason Schleifer and Bruce Wils...

Ken's career spans more than two decades in the cutting edge confines of PDI and DreamWorks Animation. Ken was there for Antz, the Shrek films, Monsters vs Aliens and much much more.  We talk about his career and touch on the evolution of visual effects within the animation industry, including pushing the limits at DreamWorks on Shrek, the Golden Gate Bridge destruction in Monsters Vs Aliens...

Jim Capobianco's list of credits and achievements is too long to list here, but his career spans Disney and Pixar as a story artist, where he worked as a story artist on many great films, the Lion King, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc, Finding memo, Inside Out and Coco among them. He was Oscar nominated for co-writing Ratatouille, and his personal short film is in the permanent collection at...

In this episode of Creators Society Animation Podcast, I chat with award-winning producer Bonnie Arnold at length about her career journey. Bonnie produced the first CG animated film Toy Story, but didn't begin in animation. With a wealth of experience under her belt, including Toy Story , the How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy, Over the Hedge , and Dances With Wolves , Bonnie's story to b...

We’re back with season two of the Creators Society Animation Podcast. In this mini-episode/trailer, I chat with Eric Miller, the founder of The Creators Society about his journey from Ohio to Dreamworks to what he’s up to now. We also chat about some of the exciting episodes we have coming up including Bonnie Arnold, Ken Bielenberg, and Jim Capobianco. If you enjoy this podcast, please take the ti...

Today's conversation with Nate Barnard is really interesting in many ways. Nate's journey followed an unusual path from production management to CG supervision, certainly not typical of someone in his position. He got his start at Mainframe and has worked on series and features from Sausage Party to Cinesite's The Addams Family.  Nate was also CG Supervisor on Cinzia Angelini's...