Growing up in the damp and rainy Pacific Northwest, there was plenty of time to stay inside and draw. Starting at age 2, this was mostly what I did. I discovered my love of animation when I was about 10, specifically when "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" came out. After seeing that film, I knew whatever that was, I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. I started making flip books and devoured any book about animation I could get my hands on. At 17, after receiving a stinging rejection letter from CalArts, I got my first job at a small studio in Portland making educational CD-ROMs.
Over the next 15 years, commercial animation took me to exotic, far away places like Canada, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, but try as I might, I struggled to get a response from the big studios. It soon dawned on me that by not going to animation school, I had skipped an important step towards getting into features: directing a short film of my own. In 2006 I partnered with Titmouse to make ‘Pinched’, a nearly 3 year endeavor. Soon after finishing that, I joined Laika, where I worked for the next 7 years doing storyboards and character exploration, contributing to such Oscar nominated films as 'Paranorman', 'The Boxtrolls', 'Kubo and the Two Strings' and 'Missing Link'. In 2017 I left Laika to work in Spain as a senior animator on 'Klaus'. Currently I'm working at Netflix as a story artist on feature films.
David's Website: https://www.davidvandervoort.com/
LinkedIn