Tom Sito, live from Southern California!

Monday 14th December, 8.30pm London Time/12.30 pm Pacific Time

Tom Sito, animator on Disney’s Beauty And The Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas and Who Framed Roger Rabbit and a Professor of Cinematic Practice at USC’s George Lucas School of Cinematic Arts joined us live from California.

 

FULL BIOGRAPHY (taken from tomsito.com)

Tom Sito is a graduate of New Yorks High School of Art & Design, where he first learned animation. Then he attended the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League. His instructors included Harvey Kurtzman, Gil Miret, Howard Beckerman and Robert Beverly Hale.

Tom’s professional mentors include Shamus Culhane (he was his last assistant) Richard Williams, Art Babbitt and Ben Washam.

He began as a professional animator in 1975 and was an assistant on the Richard Williams film Raggedy ANN & ANDY 1977. Tom Sito’s screen credits include the Disney classics THE LITTLE MERMAID 1989, BEAUTY & THE BEAST 1991, ALADDIN 1992, THE LION KING 1994, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBITT 1988, POCAHONTAS 1995, DINOSAURS 2000 and FANTASIA 2000. Animation World Network called Tom “one of the key players in the Disney Animation Revival” ( January 2001 ) In 1995 he left a Disney directorship post to help set up the Dreamworks Animation unit. He worked on THE PRINCE OF EGYPT 2001, ANTZ 1999, PAULIE 1998, SPIRIT, STALLION OF THE CIMMARON 2002, storyboard supervisor on SHREK 2001. Tom also helped animate the title sequence of CITY SLICKERS, the 1982 Emmy award winning ABC special ZIGGY’S GIFT 1982, His TV work includes FAT ALBERT, HE MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, SHE-RA,GO-BOTS, LEGEND OF THE DRAGON, and BIKER MICE FROM MARS and numerous commercials. Tom co-directed the animation for Warner Bros. OSMOSIS JONES 2001 and did storyboards for Warners Bros THE LOONEY TUNES MOVIE 2003, Fox’s GARFIELD 2004 and THE SON OF THE MASK 2005. For filmmaker Randy Olsen he created animation for the documentary FLOCK OF DODOS: THE EVOLUTION-INTELLIGENT DESIGN CIRCUS (2006).He directed ADVENTURES IN THE NPM(2007) for the National Palace Museum of Taiwan.(Winner Grand Prix: Tokyo International Anime Festival 2008).

Tom Sito is currently a Professor of Cinematic Practice at USC’s George Lucas School of Cinematic Arts. He has also taught at Woodbury College, Cal Arts,UCLA and Santa Monica College and has written numerous articles for Animation Magazine and Animation World Network. He has lectured on animation at NYU, SVA, AFI, SCAD, BYU, Univ.of Washington, Microsoft,SIGGRAPH, Capilano College, VFS and Sheridan College in Canada, EURO-CARTOON, the Ecole Du Grand Gobelin in Paris and Cartoon Masters in Erfurt Germany and Anghouleme France, ICA Channel 4/MESH in London, The Animation Academy of Viborg Denmark, The Filmakademie Stuttgart, The Animar Festival in Palma Majorca, The Beijing Film Academy and the Yomiuri New Media Forum in Tokyo and The Japan Digital Animation Festival in Nagoya.

Tom Sito served three terms as President of the Hollywood Animation Guild Local 839 IATSE, the largest professional tradeunion for animation cartoonists in the world. He now holds the title of President-Emeritus. He was vice president of the International Animator’s Society (ASIFA/Hollywood) He is a member of the Motion Picture Academy, the National Cartoonists Society and Hollywood Heritage.

His books “Drawing the Line: the Untold Story of Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson”,from University Press of Kentucky and the anthology Jews in American Popular Culture (Praeger Publishing) and Timing for Animation( Focal/Elsevier Press) and Moving Innovation, A History of Computer Animation(MIT Press, 2013) are available in most popular book stores.

Drawing the Line was recommended by the Firestone School of Economics of Princeton University and the London Review of Books.

In 2010 he was awarded the June Foray Award from the Hollywood Chapter of the International Animators Society for a lifetime of service to the animation community.
In 1998 he was named in Animation Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Important People in Animation.