JOHN DONKIN: "Going Nuts for Production at Blue Sky Studios"
Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 7:30 PM in the UTD Conference Center Auditorium (CN 1.112). (Open to all students and the public).

JOHN DONKIN: "Going Nuts for Production at Blue Sky Studios" - an inside look at the production process of Blue Sky Studio's production of "No Time For Nuts" an animated Short featuring Ice Age's most popular character "Scrat." JOHN DONKIN (Academy Award Nomination 2005) of Blue Sky Studios in New York will visit UT Dallas' Arts and Technology program on January 18, 2007. He is the producer of Ice Age, Robots and Melt Down among other films.

Biography

John C. Donkin began his computer animation career in 1983 when he joined the
world renowned CGRG (Computer Graphics Research Group) at The Ohio State University. Shortly thereafter he began working as a Senior Animator at Cranston/Csuri Productions.

In 1987 he returned to Ohio State as a Researcher and Adjunct Professor for the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD).  He directed animation for the IMAX film Antarctica and was part of the development team for the visualization software toolkit apE. 

In 1991, he joined Lamb & Company (Minneapolis, MN) where he served as an Animation Director and Manager at the studio.

John came to Blue Sky Studios in 1998, as a Technical Director where one of his first projects was to help in the completion of the company's Academy Award winning short film Bunny.

He developed the production pipeline for Blue Sky’s first animated feature film project Ice Age before becoming the film’s Associate Producer managing the production and its 160 person production crew.

He Produced the award winning short Gone Nutty featuring the character Scrat from Ice Age earning him an Academy Award Nomination along with Director Carlos Saldanha.    He also produced the extra material for the Ice Age DVD release.

John was one of the Producers on Blue Sky’s Robots and was the Producer of the extra material for its DVD release.  Most recently John Produced a brand new short “No Time For Nuts” and extra material for the Ice Age: The Meltdown DVD release.  He is currently in pre-production on a new feature production at Blue Sky Studios.

John holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Cinematography and a Masters of Art Degree in Computer Animation, Art Education from The Ohio State University. He lives in Katonah, NY with his wife Teresa and two children Alec and Nola.

FILMOGRAPHY/CREDITS:

Producer – Filmography Shorts
          No Time For Nuts (2006) Animated Short (USA)
          Aunt Fanny’s Tour of Booty (2005) Animated Short (USA)
          Gone Nutty (2002)…aka Scrat’s Missing Adventure (USA)
          Nomination – Academy Award, Best Animated Short Subject

Producer – Filmography Animated Features
          Robots (2005)…aka Robots: The IMAX Experience (USA: IMAX version)
          Nomination – Producer’s Guild Award, Producer of the Year, Animated Feature 2006

Associate Producer - Filmography
            Ice Age (2002)

Miscellaneous Crew – Filmography
Technical Director
            Bunny (1998)
Animation Director
            Antarctica (1991)…aka Antarctica: An Adventure of a Different Nature (Australia)

Visual Effects – Filmography
Digital Effects Supervisor: Blue Sky Studios
            Jesus’ Son (1999)