Dave Wolfe


What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Dave Wolfe. I recently started a game company called Cosmic Games, and these days I spend most of my time programming.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I never really had any crazy jobs, but in high school I was a telemarketer and during college I did tech support for a dial-up ISP. Both jobs were pretty terrible but they paid better than most part time jobs.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I think the show I’m most proud of working on was Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends for Cartoon Network. I was introduced to it while in school and loved it, I never imagined I’d be working on it just a few years later. I also really enjoyed working on Slammo & Sloshie for AOL even though the final product didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve always loved animation, I grew up watching Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, and I would Continue reading

Jeremy Steiner

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What is your name and your current occupation?
I am Jeremy Steiner, freelance designer, illustrator, and concept artist and designer for Sony Pictures Interactive.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I don’t actually work in the animation industry currently, but have some experience in the past with color key painting. The craziest job was when I worked as a caricature artist at Bar Mitzvahs.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
In July, I launched the game Hotel Transylvania, which is a social game for Facebook. I have been fortunate enough to work on other great projects including the Smurfs Website, God Of War: Betrayal mobile game, Jeopardy and Wheel Of Fortune for the PlayStation Network, and Legends Of Norrath MMO Game for Sony Online Entertainment.

How did you become interested in animation?
I have had an interest in animation since I took a film class while I attended Art Center. At Art Center, I met talented instructors that worked in animation, and they inspired me. While working at Sony, Continue reading

David Russell

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What is your name and your current occupation?
David Russell, and I’m a concept and storyboard artist/writer working primarily in feature films. My literary moniker is David Bryan Russell.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Painting portraits of Hell’s Angels bikers would qualify as my craziest gig.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Special productions to date would include Return of the Jedi, The Color Purple, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Batman, Terminator 2; Judgement Day, Tombstone, Moulin Rouge, Master and Commander, The Chronicles of Narnia; The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,/Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Red Tails, and Paradise Lost.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I’m a great fan of the early Disney animated features. I jumped at the chance to work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, particularly since Continue reading

Rick Hill

 

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Rick Hill and I’m a freelance Art Director / Character Designer in the Atlanta area.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Well I’ve spent the last 15 years working as an Art Director in the advertising industry. But before that I was a fabric cutter at a warehouse, an assembly line order picker at another warehouse and a pizza maker at Pizza Hut. That’s just a few. ha!

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
When I worked at Mullen (ad shop in Boston) I worked on the launch of Gametap.com with Turner. I got the chance to pitch and sell an original cartoon called Lame Games. It was an online video game cartoon series. I designed the cast of characters that ranged from 8bit to 128 bit. That was my first real taste of working on character design. Which is strange if you work in advertising. A good strange if you ask me. Another fun project was working on Baskin Robbins Ice Cream. It was another situation where my writer and I pitched character driven work and it sold. We worked with the talent folks at Nathan Love in NYC on the 3D characters and the animation.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve been interested in animation my whole life. I can’t believe Continue reading

Brent Noll

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What is your name and your current occupation? 
Brent Noll- I am Director of Illustration and Animation At How It Works Media, And Free Lance Illustrator. I Also draw caricature at theme parks and the occasionally I attend class.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? 
One of My first Jobs was at a golf course in a rich upscale community of conservative elites in the Texas Hill country. I was the miserable peon assigned to picking up golf balls on the driving range while over privileged 7 year olds attempted to drive golf balls 150 yards in my general direction. I got hit on several occasions. I drove an armor plated golf cart with a tendency to get tangled up on itself. I also would venture out of my mobile chicken wire fortress and wear some kind of golf ball extracting contraptions on my arms and stomp around the woods retrieving lost balls. I’d stand precariously close the golfers knee deep in some freezing mucky streams and attempt to meet that days quota of lost balls. Also I had to wash said golf balls. I still have an image in my mind of the grounds keeper repeating over and over again in a toothless southern accent that it was “Very imPOR-Tint ta wersh ur balls son”

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
One of My clients at work is StarMap. The original creator of the technology that allows you to hold up your Iphone to the sky and have it interpolate constellations. He really likes classic cartoons and my work. I spend a lot of time making sure that his character designs really pay homage to classic Hana Barbara Characters and the golden age of animation. at first I didn’t think it would be interesting to draw that stuff. But it really opened my eyes to simple designs and fun cartoony shapes.
Also One time I did a bus wrap design for a Hospital in Austin. They let my draw cartoon Jet engines and big Chevy fenders on the side. I think the bus goes around inner city schools and gives free rabies shots to underprivileged kids or something.

How did you become interested in animation?
When I was 18. I knew I liked to watch cartoons and preferred them over real shows. And I could draw really well compared to people at my school. I drew the comics on the school newspaper but I didn’t have any sort of direction. one day I went to visit my mom at the boutique store she was working at. I saw Continue reading

Leo Antolini

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Leo Antolini, and I´m currently an illustrator and character designer.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I´ve been very lucky that I went straight to working in animation after I graduated (although it took a while) I actually got one of my first illustration gigs while applying for a telemarketer job: the company found out I was an artist and they asked me to do some character design proposals for their new website.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I´ve done a lot of projects for Leapfrog, and since I love what they do (educational children´s books and toys), I´ve been proud of pretty much everything I´ve done for them, but I´d single out Sing Along Read-Along (a really fun, cool project) and the “If I Were…” book, which was the first time I got to do an entire book by myself. As far as animation goes, I was super proud of all the work I did (character designs, storyboarding and directing!) on the “Brock O´Lee” shorts for PepperMelon studios: it was a big learning experience to wear all those hats, and the final product turned out awesome, I thought.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I´ve been obsessed with cartoons since I can remember. I watched everything (and I mean everything) I could all throughout my childhood, from toy-centric 80´s tv shows and Disney movies to weird, artsy European animation. I loved to draw and create my own characters. When I got to the age where people usually stop caring about cartoons and move on to other interests, I pretty much just kept going. I was really into Continue reading