Tim Burton
Tim Burton has created some of the most outstanding dark, strange and stimulating creative visions in filmmaking history, including Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, and Sleepy Hollow. His dark and evocative dreams come to life on film revealing an imagination lush with originality and atmosphere. He has an ingenious talent for creating haunting landscapes that come alive with an intensity and beauty rarely seen. His characters are inventive and inspiring and yet often on the edge of society.
Tim Burton began his life in Burbank, California, a suburban town where many a movie and television studios can be found. He was born on the 25th August 1958 the son of Bill and Jean Burton he has one brother called Daniel.
Tim was a very contemplative boy and very quiet, yet he did have a passion for movies. When he was a teenager he would go to the strange triple showings at his local Cinema with movies called "Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde" and "Destroy all Monsters". Tim Burton adored monster movies and was never afraid of them.
However the real interest for Tim was the movies starring the renowned actor Vincent Price. If you have not seen any Vincent Price movies I can tell you that they do have a special atmosphere to them, Vincent had an incredible screen presence in all of his movies especially in the director "Roger Corman's" Edgar Allen Poe adaptations.
Tim Burton began to experiment with his imagination as a young boy making Super 8 Movies including one called "The Island of Doctor Agor" and a wolf movie amongst others.
In 1976 Burton won a scholarship for the California Institute of the Arts, a college founded by Walt Disney. He decided that animation was what he wanted to do and in 1979 he began working, as an animator on the studio's "The Fox and the Hound". Burton struggled with the work he was given; drawing a sweet fox for many years he became very downhearted. This was not what he had aspirations for when he joined Disney.
However, whilst working there he continued to do his own unique drawings and sketches, which soon captured the attention of some people at Disney who recognized in his work a rare and unusual talent. Before long he completed the writing and drawings for the animation "Vincent" and was given the opportunity to make the five-minute film.
He went on to do the animation "Hansel and Gretel" and his own "Frankenweenie", a twenty-five minute long re-making of the film Frankenstein by James Whale with the monster as a dog.
Tim Burton's first movie was "Pee-Wee's big adventure starring Pee Wee Herman, he went on to direct the movie "Batman" starring Michael Keaton and produce the animated masterpiece "The Nightmare before Christmas" his most recent movie to date is "Planet of the Apes".
Jhonen Vasquez
Jhonen Vasquez was born on September 1st, 1974 in San Jose, California. He graduated Mount Pleasant high school in 1992, and then began film classes at De Anza college.
In 1995, he first published one of his comics [Johnny the Homicidal Maniac – above]
in Carpe Noctem, an underground goth magazine. Johnny was his first and most popular comic series, and it was soon picked up by Slave Labor Graphics, which is still Jhonen's publisher.
More of Jhonen's comics include , I feel sick: A book about a girl and the Bad Art Collection.
Jhonen Vasquez also did a show for Nickelodeon, called .
Pete Docter
Pete Docter was one of the first animators hired by Pixar Animation Studios where he served as the animation supervisor for the hit animated movie Toy Story. He also helped write and storyboard Toy Story.
Docter's name became big with his first directoral debut - which holds the record for the biggest opening weekend ever for an animated production.
Docter's other Pixar credits include animating and directing commercials for Tropicana Fruit Juice, Tetra-Pak drink box recycling and Lifesaver Holes at the beach. Docter's interest in animation began at age 8 when he made his first flipbook. He went on to study character animation at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) in Valencia, where he produced several student films, including the Student Academy Award-winning Next Door.
Prior to joining Pixar, Docter was involved in creating hand-drawn animation for Disney, Bob Rogers and Company, Bajus-Jones Film Corp. and Reelworks in Minneapolis.
Miguel Fuertes
Miguel Fuertes started his animation and visual effects career with Hanna Barbera, where he worked as a storyboard artist, camera operator, and animator. Projects he worked on included The Flinstones, The Jetsons, Smurfs, and several television features.
Fuertes joined Steven Spielberg's London animation studio, Amblimation, in 1989 where he served as an animator for Fievel Goes West, We're Back, and Balto. In 1994, Fuertes joined Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) where he started his visual effects work for them with the movie Casper. His skills led him to become a lead animator and animation supervisor at ILM. Some of his high profile work can be seen in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Men in Black 2.
Fuertes graduated from The Information & Sciences University in Madrid, Spain. He has also taught classical animation for Denmark's Animation Workshop.
