Creators Society Animation Podcast

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 sit down and chat.

I then spoke with Dylan Edwards from Copernicus Studios in Canada about the journey of the show they're just beginning production on but which had a 10-year development cycle.

And finally, I spoke with Rich Dickerson, an Emmy Award-winning composer who has been part of this podcast from the beginning as he created the music for our theme. It was great to sit down and chat with Rich about his journey.

We would love to hear your feedback on this episode so please get in touch.

Show notes:
Pencilish Studios can be found at Pencilish.com
Check out Tom and his brother Tony's podcast - The Bancroft Bros Animation Podcast
Copernicus Studios can be found at CopernicusStudios.com
And Rich Dickerson can be found here

Please like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media if you enjoy it.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

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Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.net

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 story itself, but there are a lot more ingredients mixed in here, and really, this conversation was so enjoyable because Jonas is a super nice guy, gracious, humble and obviously absolutely loves what he does. We talk about the early days of Pixar, touch on all the films he produced and his work with Pete Docter, chat about a producers role in the brain trust, and lots more

I know you'll really enjoy this one and Jonas was really generous with his time, which was essential in sharing such a long and interesting career. And Jonas is still a pretty young guy, so there's a lot more career to come.

The book referred to toward the end of the episode is 'You Negotiate Like A Girl' by Amy Trask.

Enjoy!

Please like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media if you enjoy it.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

If you'd like to hear about new episodes in your inbox, please subscribe here.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.net

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 Girls, Julie was there.
We chat through how she got started, and touch on various parts of her career, before chatting about the state of the industry now, the cyclical nature of original IP in the marketplace, and how to stand out from the crowd when shopping around yourself and your ideas.

Enjoy!

Please like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media if you enjoy it.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

If you'd like to hear about new episodes in your inbox, please subscribe here.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.net

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 live-action, and traces through the Jim Henson Company and DreamWorks Animation before she started at Sony.

We touch on "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" and talk about how it impacted the industry, the development process, and ethos at Sony, including working with ImageWorks, Phil Lord, and Chris Miller, touching on the upcoming k-pop movie and the agent Elvis series. So I really hope you enjoy this and get as much from it as I did.

Please like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media if you enjoyed it.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

If you'd like to hear about new episodes in your inbox, please subscribe here.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.net

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 interviews. What's cool is that Joel and Januel are really close friends, and got to work side by side on a movie which is really a fun ride. And you can tell they have loved making this - it comes through in every frame. It doesn't matter if you've seen the previous Puss In Boots or not, or any of the Shrek films, this one stands alone. It's fresh in style, darker in tone in places with a real depth. We get to chat about a lot of that, but somehow I felt like we were just scratching the surface. And we stayed pretty much out of spoiler territory I think so that you can listen to this before or after you see it - or both.

Show notes:

• If you want to check out Joel's student film, you can find it here. Well worth the watch.

Please remember to like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.plus

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's career journey from studying in France to DreamWorks, and we touch on a few projects, including canceled while in production projects - which may speak to many people affected this year - to his feature directorial debut.

Pierre clearly had a great time making this film.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

A few notes from the show:

• Highly recommend you watch the teaser animatic that Pierre put together to sell the project internally can be found here. A great example of how to sell a concept.
• Pierre's short film from Goblins can be seen here - Super fun!

Please remember to like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.plus

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 producers capable of balancing the well-being of their role and their team with everything a role in production entails.

Aptly named the Happy Producers, we had a wonderful conversation talking about their careers, their approach, and really their mission to have a lasting impact on the mental health of the industry. Of course, they're still hands-on producers in their own right, keeping them in touch with everything that's happening within the industry and their field.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

You can find out more about L.P , Virginie, and The Happy Producers here.

Please remember to like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.net

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 is the third actor to voice Donald Duck for Disney, a role that recently earned him an Emmy nomination.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Please remember to like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.net

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 how the animation on Spider-Verse was a culmination of things that had been building for years, and how that first trailer drop allowed them to breathe a sigh of relief.

Josh was also Head of Animation on Netflix's surprise gem, The Sea Beast which premiered earlier this year.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Please remember to like, rate, and comment on your favorite podcasting platform and share the episode on social media.

If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

Edited by: Zoe Wakelam

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.

Learn more about the Creators Society, and how to become a member at creatorssociety.net

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 knew him, since the early Pixar days.

Ralph shared his journey and his wisdom generously in this interview, talking about his beginnings at Cal Arts, his big break animating on Family Dog with Brad Bird, Fern Gully with Bill and Sue Kroyer, and his time at Pixar. He gets in-depth about his process and adds tips and advice for young artists. This episode was our longest and one of our most popular, so I encourage you to listen and learn and appreciate this talent who is gone too soon.

Toward the end of the episode, Ralph talks about a recommended reading list for filmmaking and production design. We've shared the list below.

The Big Goodbye, by Sam Wasson
All text, a few pics. An exceptionally well-written account of the making of the movie Chinatown, with lots of design insight by the film’s production designer Richard Sylbert. Can get on iPad…one of the best books on making a film EVER. Blast to read (like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, but on one film!)

By Design, by Vincent LoBrutto
All text. Interviews with film production designers.

Hollywood Art , by Beverly Heisner
GREAT survey of the design departments of the major film studios in the early to late 20th Century. Lots of medium-quality pics, but a great starting place for names and films to look into further.

Designs on Film: A Century of Art Direction, by Cathy Whitlock
Excellent book LOADED with high-quality images.

Selznick’s Vision, by Alan David Vertrees and Thomas Schatz
EXCELLENT book on the design and making of Gone with the Wind. At first, it reads like a doctoral thesis, which it probably is. But endlessly fascinating. The first film to give credit to Production Design to the great William Cameron Menzies.

William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come, by James Curtis
Terrific biography of the great William Cameron Menzies

Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist, by Richard Sylbert
Autobiography of Richard Sylbert

Production Design and Art Direction (Screencraft Series), by Peter Ettedgui
Great overview of more modern films. Lots of interviews and TONS of images!

Production Design: Visual Design for Film and Television, by Peg McClellan
Excellent book. Lots of practical stuff.

Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television, by Jane Barnwell
Lots of good basic info.

The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, by Richard M. Isackes, Karen L. Maness

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Thanks for listening. If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch.

Host & Producer: Michael Wakelam

Executive Producer: Eric M. Miller

Music by: Rich Dickerson

Audio Engineering: Mike Rocha

The Creators Society is a professional society for all disciplines of the animation industry. Our mission is to bring the animation community together to build strong relationships, provide education, and form a better understanding of the different roles we all play in creating animated stories. We celebrate and promote the love of animation, and all the talented Creators who breathe life and imagination into their work.