Kids Entertainment Professionals For Young Refugees Fundraiser

Animators and actors, writers and composers, game designers and YA authors, producers, board artists, agents, studio and network executives – the entire international children’s entertainment community is coming together June 18-24 in an unprecedented grassroots fundraiser via Crowdrise. Help spread the word! PLEASE SHARE THIS VIDEO with friends and colleagues and SIGN UP FOR THE FUNDRAISER NOW at: https://www.facebook.com/events/114556855770817/
More information at our home page: https://www.facebook.com/kepyr/
Thank you – and Keep the Love Coming!

Ryan Kramer

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Ryan Kramer, and I’m a storyboard artist/writer currently at Cartoon Network.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I’ve sold diet pills over the phone, I worked at a car wash, I worked in the costuming dept. at Disneyland, and I worked at movie theatre.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
The current show I’m on, “Uncle Grandpa” is my favorite so far. It’s written and drawn by cartoonists!! Also, I really enjoyed my time storyboarding on Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
Born in Glendora, CA and currently residing in Glendora, CA. I wanted to work in animation so I spent a lot of time drawing and making my own cartoons. As the coaches on my high school football team would say, Continue reading

Keiko Murayama

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


What is your name and your current occupation? 
My name is Keiko Murayama, my current occupation is a BG painter at Nickelodeon Animation Studios.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? 
I used to work at a Motion Studio as a vis dev artist for TV commercials. One fun project I had there was for a sugar company where I had to design a set and props made only of sweet stuff, and then they actually had to build that.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
I got to work on a couple pages for the Big Golden Book for Wreck-It-Ralph. A lot of my friends from school also worked on it I’d never seen my work as a published book form, so when I saw the actual product, I was very proud.

How did you become interested in animation? 
I grew up watching anime stuff, which I love, but it’s not my passion. Then, I came to the U.S after high school and saw Continue reading

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

Rick Hill

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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