Jack Hsu is an American storyboard artist and animation director. He is the creator of Way Out Comics, an independent publisher of comic books and graphic novels. [1] He's also the co-founder of SupaPop Studios, an IP Incubator, with artist Sean Danconia.
Hsu was born in Taiwan and raised in Japan and the United States. [2]
He developed an interest for drawing at age 3, and read manga and comic books growing up in Japan.[ citation needed ]
He received degrees in architecture from U.C. Berkeley and Yale, and discovered the world of movie making when he was designing the commissary at Culver Studios. It rekindled his love of storytelling and steered his career path towards live action and animation movies. [3]
Hsu worked as an architect for five years before pursuing his childhood passion of narrative art.
He worked for a few years in TV animation and designed the characters for The Incredible Hulk and The Mummy series.
He then became a storyboard artist working in live-actions films. Some blockbuster films he worked on include: Stuart Little 2 , Spider-Man 2 , and The Haunted Mansion . Later he joined Sony Pictures Animation to work on Open Season and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs . [4]
In 2013, he joined Francis Kao, formerly head of Imagi Studios, and his newly founded Unicorn Studios in Hong Kong to direct and develop animation films for. Around the same time, he consulted with Mass Animation on "Blazing Samurai", which was released theatrically in 2022 as "Paws Of Fury".
In 2015, he joined Warner Animation Group as the Head of Story on Lego Batman. That same year, his graphic novel "8-9-3" was optioned by HBO to be developed by Michael Mann into a live-action series.
In 2017, he joined Riot Games as a story consultant for its film and TV development division. Among the many projects he was involved with was "Arcane", the critically acclaimed series on Netflix.
Hsu won the Xeric Grant award twice, first for Poppie's Adventures, and again for 8-9-3, an action-packed graphic novel about the criminal underworld of Japanese Yakuza. [5]
Hsu is married to Julie Yeh, whom he met when they were both in graduate schools in the East Coast. The couple live in Los Angeles and have two daughters.
A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic, or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at Walt Disney Productions during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios.
Charles Henry Selick Jr. is an American filmmaker and animator. He is known for his gothic horror films and for directing the stop-motion animated films The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996), Monkeybone (2001), Coraline (2009), and Wendell & Wild (2022). Selick is also known for his collaborations with the late voice actor and artist Joe Ranft.
Mitchell Lee Schauer is an American animation professional who has been involved television programs and feature films since 1978. He is perhaps best known as the creator of the critically acclaimed Nickelodeon animated sitcom The Angry Beavers.
Dave Lee Stevens was an American illustrator and comics artist. He was most famous for creating The Rocketeer comic book and film character, and for his pin-up style "glamour art" illustrations, especially of model Bettie Page. He was the first to win Comic-Con International's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award in 1982, and received both an Inkpot Award and the Kirby Award for Best Graphic Album in 1986.
Scott Morse is an American animator, filmmaker, and comic book artist/writer.
Robert Frank Camp is an American animator, writer, cartoonist, comic book artist, storyboard artist, director, and producer. He has been nominated for two Emmys, a CableACE Award, and an Annie Award for his work on The Ren & Stimpy Show.
Dean Allan DeBlois is a Canadian filmmaker and animator. He is best known for writing and directing the Oscar-nominated animated feature films Lilo & Stitch for Walt Disney Animation Studios, the How to Train Your Dragon film trilogy for DreamWorks Animation, and directing the documentary Heima about the Icelandic band Sigur Rós.
LeSean Thomas is an American television animation producer, director, animator, comic book artist, writer, character designer, and storyboard artist, based in Meguro, Tokyo.
Rubén Procopio is an American animation and comic book artist, animator and sculptor. Long affiliated with Walt Disney Feature Animation as an animator and sculptor, Rubén is credited with restoring the maquette process to feature animation film production in the early 1980s. He is the founder of Masked Avenger Studios, whose clients include Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Studios, New Line Cinema, Cartoon Network, Electric Tiki and DC Comics. He is known for his versatile sculpting and illustration style in both cartoony and realistic characters, with an emphasis on Disney characters, superheroes, and the masked heroes of yesteryear.
Adventure Time is an American fantasy animated television series created by Pendleton Ward and co-produced by Frederator Studios for Cartoon Network. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake —a dog with the power to change size and shape at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with Princess Bubblegum, the Ice King, Marceline, BMO, and others. The series is based on a 2007 short film that aired on Nicktoons. After the short became a viral hit on the Internet, Nickelodeon's executives passed on its option before Cartoon Network commissioned a full-length series from Fred Seibert and Ward, which was previewed on March 11, 2010. The same year, the series premiered on Cartoon Network on April 5, and it ended its eight-year run on September 3, 2018.
Shot-for-shot is a way to describe a visual work based on an existing work that is transferred almost completely identically from the original work without much interpretation.
Dan Fraga is an American comic book artist, storyboard artist, concept artist, and animation and film director. He also hosts a Youtube show called, "Couchdoodles Show". Immediately after high school, he was hired to work as an illustrator for Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios, one of the founding partner studios that made up Image Comics.
Frederik Du Chau is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and animator.
Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi are twin French artists, painters, illustrators, animators, and film directors.
Michael Docherty was a Scottish comic book and animation artist living in California. He is best known for his work on Marvel Comic's 1980s and 1990s Conan comics. Since the mid-1990s he began on drawing concept designs and storyboards for animation, live-action TV and movie projects, but mainly focusing on animation. For over a decade, Docherty was one of the most prolific artists in the Conan Universe, with credits penciling 'Conan the Barbarian', 'Conan the King' and 'Savage Sword of Conan'. He also illustrated the Conan graphic novels 'The Horn of Azoth' and 'The Ravagers Out of Time'. After penciling three issues of 'Conan the Savage' in 1996, Docherty left Marvel for animation, where he worked as a storyboard artist on 'The Incredible Hulk', 'Godzilla: The Series' and 'Captain Simian & The Space Monkeys'.
Milton Knight Jr. is an American cartoonist, animator, comic book artist, writer, painter, and storyboard/layout artist. He directed animation for a variety of cartoon series, including Cool World, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. He is known for his Golden Age (1930s) cartooning style.
Enrico Casarosa is an Italian director, screenwriter and storyboard artist. Best known for his work at Pixar, he has directed the short film La Luna (2011) and the feature film Luca (2021), which both were nominated for Academy Awards.
Glyn Dillon is a British costume designer, as well as a comics and film storyboard and concept artist, best known for his work on the Star Wars films The Force Awakens and Rogue One, designing the batsuit for Matt Reeves' 2022 The Batman ...as well as his 2012 graphic novel The Nao of Brown.
Jay Oliva is an American film director, producer, and storyboard artist working at Los Angeles–based animation studio Lex+Otis.
Aimée de Jongh is a graphic novelist and animator, whose books have been published in more than 30 countries. She has won numerous international awards for her graphic novels and was nominated for three Eisner Awards for Days of Sand and Sixty Years in Winter. Her books have received the Prix Saint-Michel, the Atomium Comic Strip Prizes and the International Manga Award.