Happy Trails Animation LLC, is an American animation studio specializing in feature films, commercials, music videos, broadcast graphics and short films. It is owned by Andy and Amy Collen and is located in Portland, Oregon. The company has two divisions, one for digital content and the other for commercial work such as advertisements and music or corporate videos. Happy Trails Animation has received 11 Telly Awards, 1 Crystal Heart Award, 3 Davey Awards, and numerous international film festival acknowledgments from its short films over the past 18 years.
History The studio, known for mixed media films and commercials, was started by husband and wife animators in Portland Oregon 1991. Both Andy and Amy Collen had been freelance animators in the Portland area for Will Vinton Studios during the early 1990s. Over the years Happy Trails Animation has worked on projects ranging from short films like "Rip & Glide" for MTV's Cartoon Sushi to stereoscopic 3D corporate logos for companies like Jupiter 9 Productions for their new Sci-fi feature Quantum Quest to be released through IMAX theaters around the world in late 2009.
Films Over the years Happy Trails Animation has traveled the world of Film Festivals with their short films. Each film is in a different style of animation. The studio is known for exploring with new mediums with their short films. Many of these films have won awards. A few of their films are:
William Gale Vinton was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for his Claymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such as The California Raisins. He won an Oscar for his work alongside several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for his studio's work.
Marv Newland is an American-Canadian filmmaker, specialized in animation.
The Nicktoons Film Festival was an annual event that was created by producer Fred Seibert and produced for its first three years by his Frederator Studios.
Studio 4°C Co., Ltd. is a Japanese animation studio founded by Eiko Tanaka and Kōji Morimoto in 1986. The name comes from the temperature at which water is most dense.
Laika, LLC is an American stop-motion animation studio specializing in feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos, and short films. The studio is best known for its stop-motion feature films Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link. It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, part of the Portland metropolitan area. Knight's son, Travis Knight, acts as Laika's president and CEO.
Wayne Gilbert is a Canadian working in Vancouver, British Columbia, now Head of the Character Animation Program at Vancouver Institute of Media Arts (VanArts). He was the Senior Animation and Art Director for EA Blackbox, where he directed and animated in-game and cinematics for the ground-breaking video games "skate and skate2". Before EA, Wayne lived in Northern California, working at ILM as a Senior Lead Animator and Animation Area Manager. He worked on Star Wars, Attack of the Clones, The Mummy Returns, E.T. re-release, Jurassic Park 2, and Bounty Hunter. He storyboarded and animated numerous commercials with two Clio Awards. His computer-animated short Let Go won a Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival. It was his second film created with friends while working at ILM. The first was CPU. Before that, he created 2D shorts entitled Bottoms Up and Traffic Jam, accepted into the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. As The Animation Area Manager, he had aesthetic input for animation dailies and headed the Animation Training Department. He was an advocate for thorough planning, which received opposition for a long time.
The People's Republic of Animation (PRA) is an animation studio based in Adelaide, Australia. It began as a creator of music videos for Australian bands in 2003, and has since created award-winning short films and TV commercials, and developed feature films.
Joanna Priestley is an American contemporary film director, producer, animator and teacher. Her films are in the collections of the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Priestley has had retrospectives at the British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art and Hiroshima International Animation Festival in Japan. Bill Plympton calls her the "Queen of independent animation". Priestley lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Act3animation, or Act3 for short, is an Australian CGI company, specialising in character animation, based in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1992 by current creative director, Mike Hollands, Act3 has produced various TVCs, FMVs and short films.
Screen Novelties is an American animation studio, specializing in stop motion animation. It was founded by Mark Caballero, Seamus Walsh, and Chris Finnegan.
Chel White is an American film director, composer, screenwriter and visual effects artist. In his independent films and music videos, White is known for his stylized, often experimental use of images, unusual animation and narratives depicting an outsider's perspective. He often adopts darkly humorous and poetic sensibilities to explore topics of love, obsession and alienation; with dreams and the subconscious being his greatest influences. He describes his own work as “stories and images that reside on the brink of dreams, or linger on the periphery of distorted memories.” A Rockefeller Fellow, Chel White has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award-winning writer and radio personality Joe Frank.
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in story development, television, commercials, visual effects, music videos, short films, experimental techniques and tech development in augmented reality (AR). Located in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White.
Rob Shaw is an American film director, television director, commercial and music video director, and animator. He is a graduate of University of the Arts (Philadelphia).
Paul Harrod is an American animation director, production designer, and art director with a special emphasis on stop motion.
Toys in the Attic is a 2009 internationally co-produced stop-motion animated fantasy film directed by Jiří Barta and written by Edgar Dutka and Barta which depicts a community of toys and other objects in an attic who come to life when no human is around. It is an international co-production between the Czech Republic, France, Japan and Slovakia. The film was released first in the Czech Republic on 5 March 2009 and has been shown subtitled at film festivals internationally. An American English dub – adapted, produced and directed by Vivian Schilling and performed by actors including Forest Whitaker, Joan Cusack, Cary Elwes and Schilling herself – has been recorded, which the film was first shown with on 3 March 2012 at the New York International Children's Film Festival and was released nationally on 24 August 2012 by Hannover House.
Spiderwood Studios is a motion picture, television, music and animation studio that opened in 2009 by producer Tommy G. Warren. Located east of downtown Austin, Texas, it is situated on 164 acres of back lot alongside the Colorado River, and is the state’s largest privately owned studio.
Flickerpix is a multi-media animation company based in Holywood, Northern Ireland. Currently led by Creative Director Johnny Schumann, Flickerpix have produced a wide range of projects including On The Air; a mix of stop motion and 2D animation based on the Gerry Anderson (broadcaster) BBC Radio Ulster show. They have also produced the BBC Northern Ireland series Five Fables; an adaptation of Seamus Heaney's translation of five medieval Scots fables. This was narrated by acclaimed comedian/ actor Billy Connolly and scored by Belfast-born pianist Barry Douglas. Their collaboration with CBBC Newsround for the special Living with Alcohol went on to be awarded a BAFTA.
Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation duo. On January 24, 2012, they received their second Oscar nomination, for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short film, Wild Life (2011). With their latest film, The Flying Sailor, they received several nominations and awards, including for the Best Canadian Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and on January 24, 2023, they received a nomination for the 95th Academy Awards under the category Best Animated Short Film.
Grasshorse Studios was a Midwest-based American animation studio that employed innovative techniques to develop and produce 2D animation, 3D animation, stop motion animation, 2D 3D hybrid animation. They have produced work for 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Television Animation and Cartoon Network.
Francesco Giroldini is an Italian director, writer and artist working in the animation industry.
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