My name is James EdWard Kennedy JR. I am a graduate from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA with a BFA in Animation focusing on Story Arts. My focus is on documenting, creating and preserving environmental narratives, traditions, and folklores that specifically deal with agriculture and diversity; applied into the medium of animation. I believe that a story, well told, can deepen insight and empathy, encourage connection across differences, and open possibilities for meaningful change.

In the spring of 2016, I accepted into the Inaugural Pixar@CCA: New Voices in Animation Story Intensive. This opportunity resulted in me directing and managing a group of 29 students in creating my senior thesis the Sunken Forest. My effort was to create a studio environment across disciplines within the college. I managed all areas of production duties, including ideation, script development, direction, camera work, lighting, pre/post-editing, creative support, organization structure, and ebb & flow of production. I structured the course around composition, lighting, layout techniques for animation through live-action film analysis, documentation photos, locations, and pertinent information for production prep and treatment development, while continuing my relationships with Pixar University to best organize story production.

Currently I’m working toward the role as a Story Artist at LAIKA. My training in traditional 2D character animation, Experimental and 3D computer animation combined with the skills in the story pre-visualization process, would aide in the cross disciplinary creative roles across the story team.

The opportunity of working in this engineering-based medium enables new ways of thinking about letting the creative drive the technology. Allowing innovation to move beyond the material restrictions of what the medium has done in the past, propelling and establishing new ideals that move the craft of storytelling into new areas of entertainment.

Press:

GLANCE- Pixar@CCA: New Voices in Animation

GLAS Animation Film Festival 2016- Student Archivists and Guest Relations

Inquiries:

Please use the form below to get in touch regarding work inquiries, teaching, guest lectures, interviews, etc. Thanks!