Angela Diamos

Phone:

818.252.5192

Email:

angela.diamos@woodbury.edu

Angela Diamos has over 18 years of professional experience in the feature animation and live-action effects animation field, having animated effects for Fantasia/2000, Tarzan, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Emperor’s New Groove, Star Trek, Battlestar Gallactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Quantum Leap. Angela is now channeling her talent into teaching and her personal work.

Having realized the potential in video imagery, Angela now explores the use of video and digital imagery as an art medium.

“In my work I play with the combination and juxtaposition of disparate elements. Coming from a film background (effects animation and photography) and working within that ephemeral world of non-reality, I now find myself caught up with the digital medium. Digital technology has allowed me to customize and further my craft and to incorporate the digital world, which is now a part of our environment.”

“The fragile nature of the digital realm serves to underscore my stories. Reality placed into an artificial space becomes a world of tenuous relationships mirroring that which is naturally occurring and that which is conceived by human beings. I question our connection to reality and give the viewer the responsibility to look beyond one’s immediate environment and consider differing signatures of reality that connects us to a wider universe.”

Ric Heitzman

Phone:

818.252.5126

Email:

ric.heitzman@woodbury.edu

Ric currently is an Assistant Professor in the Animation Department of the School of Media, Culture and Design. He teaches both the Senior Studio and Junior Studio courses and in 2009 introduced a Stop Motion course to the department. Ric comes to Woodbury with extensive experience and recognition for his entertainment and commercial achievements as well as his work in the fine arts.

Ric received a BFA in Studio Arts from Texas A&M University and earned an MFA in Filmmaking from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibits in a variety of media, from film to drawings, paintings and sculpture. His comic art has been exhibited internationally, and his published comics include Kaktus Valley and Motodor. Ric directs, art directs and designs animation and live action for film, television, music videos and commercials. His design, art direction and animation work have earned him three Emmy Awards for the hit series Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

Ric has directed for the Fox TV series The PJs, Cartoon Network’s The Banana Splits, Pink Donkey Goes to Japan, The Science Club and Electro-Car. Other commercial and print clients include Snapple, Coke, McDonald’s, Sprint, Atlantic Records, Nickelodeon, Disney and Children’s Television Workshop. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild he has also performed and voiced puppets for film, TV and commercials. Prior to teaching at Woodbury, Ric taught experimental animation at CalArts.

Arno Kroner

Arno Kroner is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Animation in the School of Media, Culture and Design. He has 20 years’ experience in the animation industry as an artist, manager and teacher. He currently runs a boutique studio directing and producing animated TV spots, educational animation and interactive design. His personal and commercial work can be viewed at arnokroner.com. He also has worked in Talent Development at Disney Feature Animation in Burbank and has taught for 11 years at the college level. Arno earned his French Baccalaureate (Math and Physics) at the Lycée de Cluny in France, a Master’s Degree in Advertising from Clermont University in France and an MBA from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. At Woodbury, Arno currently teaches Senior Studio as well as an animated shorts class. He is also starting to teach a new curriculum in art, science and technology.

Edward Rosas

Edward Rosas has been teaching character animation at Woodbury since 2002. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 1999 with a Certificate in Character Animation and has since worked as a traditional animator on such feature films as The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones, and The Simpsons Movie. His credits in television animation as a character designer, character layout artist and storyboard artist include The Simpsons, Futurama, Drawn Together, Free for All, Teachers Pet, Lloyd in Space, and Recess. He has also worked as an artist on the Winnie the Pooh product line at Walt Disney Consumer Products. Besides teaching at Woodbury, he has instructed high school students attending the Community Arts Partnership program at The Watts Tower Art Center.

Ken Roskos

Ken Roskos is a freelance animation artist, and is currently an adjunct professor for computer animation at Woodbury University. Roskos has worked as a Maya 3-D animator, and as a traditional assistant animator, in-betweener and cleanup artist for feature films (The Swan Princess and Space Jam), character layout artist for television (King of the Hill) and in commercials (Warner Bros. Classic Animation). Roskos is also the administrator of the Animation Guild’s Computer Lab in Los Angeles, where he aids traditional animation artists in making the transition to computer animation techniques while keeping them up to date with the latest graphics technology and software.

Roskos received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Commercial Design from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary concentration in drawing. In his computer animation classes, Roskos shows his students how to use Maya 3-D software for traditional animation techniques and basic polygon modeling. Roskos also coordinates with Woodbury’s Maintenance Department to maintain a professional and efficient studio environment for Woodbury’s students, while also helping improve Woodbury’s animation equipment and software.

Jerry Beck

Jerry Beck, a recognized leading authority of animation history, a creator, writer, and producer of animation and noted blogger at cartoonbrew.com has joined our faculty teaching Animation History.

Mr. Beck has written 15 books on the subject of animation and is a consulting producer at Warner Bros. He has previously taught animation history at NYU, SVA, AFI and UCLA. (excerpted from the Cartoon Brew site)

Jack Bosson

Jack Bosson graduated from The Cooper Union in 1963 and studied in Paris as a Fulbright Fellow in Painting, 1963-1964. He received his MFA from Cornell University in 1966. Since then, he has been an artist, teacher, muralist, animation background painter, trainer and illustrator for over 40 years.

He has exhibited paintings, drawings and prints at numerous galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad. In addition to the Fulbright, he has received The National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and New York State CAPS Grants. He has had numerous painting and mural commissions from patrons in New York, Los Angeles and Japan. His work is included in many public, corporate and private collections.

In 1993 he went back to school to learn animation at The Animation Institute. This led to a job as a background painter at Hanna-Barbera Productions and eventually to a position as an animation trainer for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He left Disney in 1998 and came to Woodbury in 2000 to become chair of the animation department.

After chairing the department for three years, and teaching full-time until 2008, Prof. Bosson retired as Professor Emeritus.  He continues to teach part-time at Woodbury University and other schools while pursuing painting and other related personal activities.

David Brain

David currently teaches Junior Animation Studio at Woodbury University. He is a graduate of Chouinard Art Institute with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. He worked as an animator for Disney Studios, Hanna-Barbera Productions and Bill Melendez Productions. For the last 20 years, he has been an animation director for Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Cartoon Network and Film Roman. He has taught animation and drawing at CalArts, Glendale College and in Ireland at Dun Laoghaire School of Design. David currently has a book in publication called Gardner’s Guide to Drawing for Animation. He is working to finish a new book on storyboarding for animation.

Barton Gawboy

Barton graduated from Dartmouth in 1978 with a BA in engineering science modified with music. He did graduate work in psychoacoustics, signal processing and computer architecture, producing a B.E. thesis describing motion control for electronic music composition.

For over twenty years, Barton has blended management skills with experience in production and engineering. He has worked at Mattel Electronics, Symbolics, Information International Inc, Nichimen Graphics, Dreamworks Feature Animation, as a partner of Anohana Production Management & Technologies, and as owner of Marina Motion, LLC.

Education and information sharing have been a strong component of the hands-on managing style Barton has brought to film projects, such as The Prince of Egypt, The King and I (animated), Vertical Limit, Shrek and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

In a career moving from computer music to computer graphics and animation, Barton has focused on methods for practical use of technology, forming channels of communication between product designers and their users. His relationship with mental images started in 1997, while at DreamWorks, when he was on an Advisory Committee for what was to become Softimage|XSI. In 2003, he started the Los Angeles mental ray User Group, and in 2004 became part of the mental images team.

Barton is presently Director of Training and Special Projects for mental images. With his current focus on mental ray training, user community and shader development, he realizes his goal to empower both individuals and teams working in the development, production and technology of animated filmmaking.

Peter C. Koczera

Peter C. Koczera is an Adjunct Professor of the Department of Animation in the School of Media, Culture and Design. He comes to teaching with over 25 years in graphics, visual effects and editing in the television and feature film industry. He has pioneered many techniques and was instrumental in the changeover from analog to digital in the editing, graphics and visual effects areas of the entertainment industry. His credits include a wide variety of television opening titles, episodic shows, commercials, music videos and feature films. Mr. Koczera’s works has gathered numerous awards for such productions as The Wonderful World of Disney, NBC World Series Main Title, and an MTV Award for Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” as well as others. Feature film work has included collaborations with many well-known directors, editors and directors of photography on films such as Envy, The Huckabees, Runaway Jury, Gothika, Holes, Van Helsing and numerous other titles. Television credits include Grey’s Anatomy, NYPD Blue, From the Earth to the Moon, Law and Order and a variety of episodic, Movies of the Week and award shows in editing, graphics and visual effects. His commercial work is too numerous to mention but has involved, to name a few, such products as Coca-Cola, Toyota, Ford, GMC, Nike and McDonald’s. Peter holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in Film and Video from California Institute of the Arts where he had received a fully-paid tuition for his master’s degree on a Dean’s Scholarship. He had also attended Boston University, The Orson Welles Film School and RCA Institutes’ TV Studio School giving him a unique perspective of both a strong technical engineering and artistic background. He currently teaches juniors and seniors in Advanced Compositing as well as being actively involved in the new Render Farm at Woodbury. He is also interested in pursuing Interdisciplinary Studies as he did for his master’s thesis at CalArts.

Sue Kroyer

Sue Kroyer is an animator and producer who has worked in the animation industry for over 30 years. She has worked for Disney, Warner Bros., Brad Bird, The Simpsons, Richard Williams and Bob Kurtz. She and her husband Bill owned their own studio, Kroyer Films, where they produced the feature film Ferngully:The Last Rainforest. Their studio also produced numerous theatrical film titles such as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Their short film, Technological Threat, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Bill Matthews

Bill Matthews currently teaches freshman animation students in the basic animation principles of classical, drawn animation as a foundation for pursuing careers in either 2-D or 3-D animation. He is a veteran of over 50 years in the Hollywood industry, both as animator and teacher/trainer.

His career started at the Walt Disney Studio working on Sleeping Beauty; he went on to become an animator for NASA in the first decade of the Space Age. In Canada he helped found the Sheridan College training program and headed the department for a decade. From there, he returned to Los Angeles, where he worked for Hanna-Barbera and Filmation briefly. After a period, he became the trainer and talent scout for the Disney Feature Animation department. Not long after retirement from Disney, Bill undertook to continue his teaching skills and has continued with Woodbury for the past 10 years.

He was recently awarded a Certificate of Merit by the animation industry for “service to the art, craft, and industry of animation” at the annual Annie Awards ceremony, and has also received the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Golden Award for a half-century in the business.

Audri Phillips

Audri Phillips is a Los Angeles-based artist currently working in a variety of mediums that range from experimental animation which includes digital videos (visual poetry), digital animation, oil paintings, multimedia (VJ) performances, dome shows and building mapping. Her work is shown in galleries, film festivals and dance performances.

In addition she works and has worked in the film industry as a digital artist and art director, for clients such as Disney Feature Animation, Electronic Arts, Rhythm & Hues, Technicolor, Prologue Films, Vortex Immersion (where she is a resident artist) and Paintscaping.

For the past several years she has been writing online content for Intel on subjects such as color and lighting and dynamics in 3-D programs.

She loves teaching and has been teaching part-time at various colleges since 2000. Currently at Woodbury, she is teaching a course in design using Maya, a 3D software package.

She has a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Examples of her work can be found at http://www.audri.com and http://www.vimeo.com/audri/videos

Jim Richardson

Jim Richardson is a freelance character animator and is currently a part-time teacher in computer animation at Woodbury University. He has animated on commercials, games and feature films for LAIKA, Electronic Arts, Rhythm & Hues, and Film Roman among other studios, and has taught traditional animation classes at Columbia as well as the Portland Art Museum. In his computer animation classes, Jim shows his students how to apply acting and classic animation techniques to Maya 3D animation software. He has a BA in Film & Video from Columbia College Chicago.

Alison Shanks

As an actress, Alison Shanks has performed off-Broadway in New York, in regional theaters throughout the country, and with several award-winning theater companies in the Los Angeles area. Her television work includes guest-starring roles on dramas and sitcoms, and spots in national commercials. Alison teaches “Intro to Acting and Behavior”, a course focusing on exploring human behavior and creativity “through an actor’s lens” - using the actor’s tools of observation, listening, physical and vocal expression and imagination to explore character development and scene and story building.

Michael Wingo

Michael Wingo teaches drawing and painting in the Department of Animation in the School of Media, Culture, and Design. He is a working artist known for his painting and drawing. He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship in Painting as well as an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant in Painting. Michael Wingo has had solo exhibitions at the Resende Center in Porto, Portugal, the Newport Harbor Art Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Terry DeLapp Gallery, Los Angeles, and Janet Steinberg Gallery in San Francisco. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Oakland Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, IBM, Bank of America (Security Pacific National Bank Collection), Manatt Phelps Rothenberg Tunney Phillips, Los Angeles, and Munger Tolles & Olson, Los Angeles. Michael’s painting has been written about (w. photos) in ArtWeek and Art in America. He is listed in the Dictionary of International Biography, Who’s Who in American Art, Who’s Who in the West, and California Painters: New Work (Henry T. Hopkins). Michael attended Art Center College of Design and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Claremont McKenna College and a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Offs Art Institute (Los Angeles). Michael has taught at Otis Parsons, Los Angeles and Occidental College and he was a Visiting Artist at the San Francisco Art Institute and a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Art (London).

Doug Post

Design Foundation Chair

Doug Post is an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Design Foundation program and also teaches in the Animation Department. Doug brings diverse experience to teaching. During ten years as a graphic designer, he worked in Colorado, New Zealand, and San Francisco designing for clients such as Aspen Ski Corporation, Breckenridge Ski Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, the Colorado International Invitational Poster Exhibition, Golden Gate Park, and Tele-Communications, Inc. As an animation artist, he has worked for The Walt Disney Company, DreamWorks SKG, and Warner Bros. on films including Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan, Fantasia 2000, Atlantis, Home on the Range, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Looney Tunes Back in Action, The Three Musketeers, Tarzan 2, and The Heffalump Movie. Doug has taught courses in drawing, figure drawing, character design, animation layout, color theory, design, graphic design, perspective, visual development, and illustration. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in graphic design from Colorado State University and a Master of Fine Arts in illustration from The Academy of Art University. In addition to teaching, Doug is a painter, sculptor, and pastel artist and continues to freelance.

Carol Bishop

Carol Bishop, artist and educator, is a Senior Lecturer in Design and
Fine Arts at Woodbury University. She has taught courses in Painting, Drawing, Design, Color Theory, and Art History. Carol’s photos, paintings, and installations reflect ideas on systems and agendas of design and architecture. Her work is in the collections of several museums and has been exhibited internationally, including the Carrousel du Louvre, the Huntington, Taliesin East and West. She has received a Sony Corporation Per Cent for Art and was chosen by Pomona for
“Envisioning the Future.” She has won a City of Los Angeles
competition for public installation.

Her images and texts have been profiled by periodicals such as Wright Plus, LA Architect and Issues & Ideas. Her book, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Romantic Spirit, is published by Balcony Press. She holds a master’s degree in Studio Art (N.I.U.) concentrating on color and a Ph.D. in Art History (Union U.) focusing on light in Modern and Contemporary Art. She speaks to educational groups on these subjects as well as issues of design and architecture. Dr. Bishop has escorted students and groups to numerous countries for Art and Design tours. She is a member of Women in Photography, SAH/SCC (Society of Architecture Historians), and CAA. She is a board member of Archifest, Les Amis de Synagogue (France) and Barnsdall Arts. She consults through her design studio, Projectile Visions.

Olivia Booth

Olivia Booth is an adjunct instructor in the Design Foundation program, where she teaches drawing, color theory and design elements. She has also taught contemporary history and theory in the Interior Architecture department. Olivia is a visual artist who works mostly with paint and glass, and is represented by Mandarin Gallery in Chinatown, Los Angeles. Olivia received her BFA in painting and her BA in comparative literature from Cornell University and, after moving from the east to west coast, received her MFA at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Nate Page

Nate received is B.F.A. from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and his M.F.A. from California Institute of the Art. He lives and works in Los Angeles. Solo projects have been produced at More Funner Projects, Miami, FL; Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, OH; Machine Project, Los Angeles, CA; St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN; Institute of Visual Arts, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee WI. Recent Group Exhibitions include Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Woodbury University, Burbank, CA; Machine Project, Los Angeles, CA; Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA; Jen Bekman Gallery, New York, NY; Greater Los Angeles MFA Exhibition, CSU Long Beach; O’Artoteca, Milan, Italy; No Name Exhibitions @ The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN; Cooper Union, New York, NY. Awards include California Community Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship, 2011; The Durfee Foundation ARC Grant, 2010; CalArts Alumni Fund, 2008.

Jaime Scholnick

Jaime is an adjunct instructor of Design and Color Elements in the Design Foundation program. She has taught courses in 3-D Design, Freehand Drawing, Figure Drawing, Basic Principles of Design, Color Theory, Foundation Studio, Experimental Design in Fashion, Sculpture and Ceramics. Jaime specializes in figure and freehand drawing (beginning to advanced), sculpture, installation, multimedia, color
theory (for design and fashion), 2-D and 3-D design, experimental design, art appreciation, beginning graphic design. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Ceramics and a Master of Fine Art in Sculpture. Jaime’s work has been displayed in many solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Japan.

Michelle Wiener

Michelle Wiener is an adjunct instructor in the Design Foundation program, where she teaches beginning drawing. Michelle is a visual artist who works mainly with paint and graphite. Her work focuses on topics of Feminist theory and popular culture. Michelle received her BA in Creative Studies with an emphasis in Painting from the College of Creative Studies within the University of California, Santa Barbara. After attaining her MFA at Otis College of Art and Design, Michelle became the artist in residence for two months at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at Samuel Freeman and Lora Schlesinger in Santa Monica, Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale, Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, and Davidson Galleries in Seattle, Washington.

Keith Walsh

Keith Walsh is an adjunct professor of Drawing in the Design Foundation. Since joining Woodbury University in 1999, he has also taught courses in the History of Furniture and the History of Contemporary Art. His background as a practicing artist includes drawing, sculpture, performance, and installations. His current sculptures merge design elements from furniture, car design, and architecture. Keith has exhibited in one-person and group shows including the Chicago Project Room, Occidental College, LA Municipal Gallery (Los Angeles), Bliss (Pasadena), CalArts (Valencia), 1R Gallery, The Stray Show (Chicago), Mobius, Boston Center for the Arts (Boston), and White Columns (NYC). His ongoing music project, the Keith Walsh Experience, has performed at many clubs in Los Angeles. He has previously taught at Endicott College (MA), University of Hartford (CT), the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts (NY). He has also worked as a freelance illustrator for private clients, model maker for Offenhauser Mekeel Architects, West Hollywood, CA, Ambrose Associates Architects, Hartford, CT, and exhibition designer for Dyansen Corporation, Boston, and Tufts University, MA. Keith holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Experimental Studio from the University of Hartford (CT), and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art and Art History from Tufts University.