BOOKINGS
     
     

 

Matthew Luhn
For over a decade,
Matthew Luhn has been teaching Directors, Producers, Screenwriters, Storyboard Artists, Animators, and thousands of others how to create successful stories and enduring characters.

With over 20 years experience in the movie industry, Matthew has worked at Industrial Light and Magic, The Simpsons, Wild Brain Entertainment and Pixar Animation Studios.

Matthew started at Pixar Animation Studios in 1992 as an Animator on the very first CG movie, Toy Story. Since that time, he has worked as a Storyboard Artist generating new ideas and characters on
Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, UP, Toy Story 3 and Monsters University. Matthew continues to work at Pixar Animation Studios as a Story Supervisor and lead instructor for the Pixar Story Internship program while teaching Story Seminars around the globe.




Matthew will be lecturing on Day 1 in Sydney & Melbourne as well as running the Day 3 Workshop with Andrew in both Sydney & Melbourne.


Andrew Gordon
Andrew Gordon
has been passionate about teaching animation since 2000. Andrew has taught animation at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, developed the animation program at the California College of Art in Oakland (CCA), and teaches animation intensives throughout the world.

Andrew is also actively involved in the leadership of The Pixar Animation Internship, is a contributing lecturer at Animation Mentor, and is one of the founders of Spline Doctors, a blog/podcast dedicated to animation education.

Andrew has been animating characters at Pixar Animation Studios for 16 years. He joined Pixar in 1997 where he has been an Animator on
A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Toy Story 3. The characters he has worked on include Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Gill from Finding Nemo, Edna Mode, the costume designer in The Incredibles and Linguini from Ratatouille. He Supervised Animation on Pixar’s Academy Award nominated short film Presto and recently finished production as a Directing Animator on Monsters University. He is currently directing animation for an upcoming Pixar project.




Andrew will be lecturing on Day 2 in Sydney & Melbourne as well as running the Day 3 Workshop with Matthew.


Bobette Buster
Bobette Buster
worked with Tony Scott for seven years, as his creative development executive and was a production Consultant with Larry Gelbart. She is the author of Do Story: How To Tell Your Story So The World Listens and is currently producing the feature documentary, Sound The Movie.

Her international lecture series,
Deconstructing Master Filmmakers, has positioned her on the Guest Faculty of Pixar, Disney Animation, Disney Channel, Sony Animation, Twentieth Century Fox, the University of Milan, La Fėmis (Paris), Screen Training Ireland, North By Northwest (Denmark), The Sundance Institute Latin American Lab (Oaxaca) and Media Business School (Spain).

She is frequently requested to create guest lectures for diverse groups on such subjects as Story Physics (for Pixar, Disney - all divisions) and The History of Hollywood Economics (for Twentieth Century Fox).




Bobette will be presenting a one-day lecture - Deconstructing a Master Filmmaker - on Day 3 Sydney & Melbourne.


"Bobette’s class not only gets people inspired; it gets results. Bobette’s seminar will change the way you watch movies - and the way you make them." Sony Animation Studio.


Christy Dena
Christy Dena
is a writer-designer-director who has worked on award-winning pervasive games, film, digital and theatre projects.

Christy was granted Australia’s first Digital Writing Residency at The Cube for her project
Robot University, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and QUT. In 2012, she was the Digital Writing Ambassador for the Emerging Writers Festival; and a prototype of her project AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS was Finalist for “Best Writing in a Game” Award at the Freeplay Independent Gaming Festival.

She has given keynotes and presentations at film, tech, writing, and gaming festivals worldwide, including
Power to the Pixel (London), DIYDays (LA), TEDxTransmedia (Switzerland). Christy is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Australian Directors Guild, and ETC Press. She is Game Design Lecturer at SAE, Professor Adjunct at Creative Industries, QUT; and wrote her PhD on Transmedia Practice. She started as a producer of digital effects at Planet X Studios.
http://www.christydena.com





Christy will be speaking at the evening session in Sydney on May 24
.

Malcolm Turner
Malcolm Turner
was originally trained as a theatre director but ‘discovered’ animation after becoming increasingly frustrated with the limitations of live performance. In an arts event management career spanning more than 25 years, he has worked on arts festival and in theatre companies in USA, Canada, UK, Croatia and New Zealand.

In 2000, he shifted to Melbourne (Australia) and joined forces with two local animators (Susi Allender and Nag Valdermersky) to found the Melbourne International Animation Festival. This festival has become one of the largest events of its kind in the world showing 450 or more films in 45 screenings over a 10 day period.

Turner travels extensively in the process of curating each MIAF, spending as much as five months a year on the road visiting most of the major animation festivals as well as archives, private collections, distributors and studios. He is a big fan of Estonian animation and is intrigued by what little animation he has seen from the former Soviet state Georgia. His favourite animator is Igor Kovalyov and his favourite animated film is “Mindscape” by Jacques Drouin. He is currently researching a book on the various ways violence is represented in animation.
http://www.miaf.net




Malcolm will be speaking at the evening session in Melbourne on May 29
.

Trent Kusters
Trent Kusters
from League of Geeks.




Trent will be speaking at the evening session in Sydney on May 24.


Mark Gravas
Mark Gravas
is a Sydney based Director, Designer, Animator and Writer who has over 25 years experience in the Film and TV industry. He worked in London from 1990-1997 and on his return to Sydney he co-founded Kapow Pictures.

While carving out an impressive reel of commercials, promos, shorts and music videos, he’s also directed and designed two 3D feature films, Casper’s Scare School and Here Comes Peter Cottontail the Movie for Classic Media in New York.

Mark created and directed the animated children's TV series Yakkity Yak for Nickelodeon (USA) as well as co-creating and directing CJ the DJ for ABC3 in Australia. His work has been screened internationally including Annecy, Ottawa and Pictoplasma.

Mark's latest commercial work includes a series of stereoscopic indents for Nintendo's 3DS, a short film for TEDx Sydney and a cinema commercial for boutique brewery 4Pines. He currently has several TV projects in development as well as a short film about mental illness.
http://kapowpictures.com/





Mark will be speaking at the evening session in Sydney on May 24.


Isabel Peppard
Isabel Peppard
is a is a multi award winning director/stopmotion animator. She started working as a special effects artist in 1999 inspired by her love of visceral horror and creature features. After years of working in the industry as a technician she started making her own short horror/fantasy films.

Isabel's' most recent animated, a short gothic fairytale called Butterflies, has screened at over 50 international festivals and was presented with the Dendy Yoram Gross Award for Best Short Animation at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2013.

In October 2013 Isabel was a recipient of The Directors Acclaim fund from Screen Australia, allowing her to undertake a writing/directing mentorship in LA with horror director Jennifer Lynch.

Isabel is currently developing her debut horror feature, Silk, in addition to writing and directing a short film for a horror anthology feature currently being developed with Unicorn Pictures.
http://www.butterfliesanimation.com/