I grew up in New England drawing constantly and loving animation, storytelling, and characters. The early 90's was a formative period in a lot of ways. The Disney Renaissance. The birth of Pixar. The (seeming) death of traditional animation. A visit to the "Disney Academy" where I was told I had potential after an employee saw my drawing of a cartoon frog. A professional artist! Dinosaurs returned and all was right in the world.

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By the time I was ready for professional training though, the characters I had grown up watching seemed to be replaced by gray spheres with fox tails attached to them. One semester at Animation Mentor and I was stumped. This wasn't exactly how I had expected to unlock the magic. My dream of spending 30 years hunched over a desk in Burbank seemed like a product of a lost era.

 

I spent the early part of my career career as a graphic artist, first on marketing campaigns and later on interactive experiences. Even in those early jobs I somehow found work creating comic books, tv spots, and low budget animated series (for clients that were mostly non-profit). I worked through a series of side doors from graphic design, to art direction, to video games and finally somehow arrived at directing full fledged animated stories. I have reached my destination and it only took me a couple decades, not bad!

 

But the reality is my home instilled a strong work ethic. My early jobs laid important foundations both in craft and professionalism. My failures have kept me humble. My experience as a leader has built both conviction and compassion. And my need to grow and learn (most likely etched from creative insecurity) has only reinforced that storytelling is a lifelong pursuit.

 

I hope you enjoy some of the work I feature here. Hopefully the next one will be even better.