Doing cleanup animation on Mickey Mouse for Disneyland’s 60th Anniversary celebration on the waterfront in Anaheim, CA. (He is blocked out for contractural reasons).

Working indirectly for the mouse was a long time coming since I first wrote to Disney at about 17 years of age wondering how I could work for the studio and was told by them to go to Art School! They also sent me the DISNEYNEWS so I would understand the process. So I got a portfolio together and went to The Rhode Island School of Design. As you can see this was a great feeling to come full circle eventually just like my experience working on a Peanuts animated special! You just can’t beat drawing Snoopy and Mickey Mouse having grown up watching them!

Snoopy’s Reunion! What a thrill to work on — I came in right at the end so I did not get credited but I will never forget my interview with Bill Melendez when he saw my short films and complimented me by calling me a “real filmmaker“!

And standing in Mary Blair’s house just a few years ago, wearing a dress with Mary Blair’s designs, reading a book illustrated by Mary Blair was also a surreal moment for me that I got to share with my son who now also has a BFA in Film but from SCAD.

I mostly started my full time professional career by working on various HBO and PBS specials (most often from published children’s books) including The Little Match Girl for which I also did the voice and a lot of the animation as well as animation direction :

But whlle still a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, I got the unique opportunity to work on a commercial for their continuing education dept. and worked with clay and stop motion. Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer is still one of my all time favorite animated films. I later got one of my first animation jobs after graduating RISD working on a clay commercial with Olive Jar Animation in Boston, MA.

But once I moved to Los Angeles, I mostly worked on feature films including Cool World and I remember one of my first scenes involved the spider “Nails” and I was so excited to be finally working on a character with the typical “white gloves”. LOL

After Cool World came Swan Princess and I was part of “Team Derek” and forced to really learn how to draw the hard stuff of human anatomy!

At Warner Bros. Feature Animation, I worked on Space Jam and Quest for Camelot and by then I was ready to be more independent and do my own thing in the children’s book industry! And so I left and it took me two years, lots of trial and error and then finally, a most forceful dream that jolted me out of bed to finally get published and on my way! But that’s another story on another page!

You can see all my credits and animation work here at imbd!

Still on my to-do list is taking some of my crafty creations (that I sell occasionally in my Etsy Shop) and animating them in stop-motion. For me the thrill of seeing your creations come to life is what is the magic that animation can give you (if you have the patience)!