The Nick Dorra Show

Nick Dorra

In this podcast I criss-cross the animation industry, speaking with interesting guests about their daily jobs, insights and inspirations as they might or might not relate to animation. The best thing about this is, I get to ask great guests some really fundamental questions!

Episodes

  1. 05/08/2020

    #4: Heath Kenny - On Bringing Process, Design Thinking and Other Best Practices to Animation Development

    Starting from the ground up and with more than 20 years of experience in the animation biz, Heath is a creative executive with an extensive knowledge of animation production and the dark arts of developing a project from mind vomit into your next potential hit. After escaping the island of New Zealand, and a brief but industrious stop in the UK (he served as Animation Director on the Gorillaz music video "Dirty Harry," for example), Heath jumped ship to the land of stinky cheese and stripy tops, a.k.a. France. He took on the role of Co-Director for the second season of Cartoon Network's Robotboy. After spending eight years in France, Heath was promoted to VP of Creative Development at Gaumont Animation. In this role he drew on all his industry experience to provide a never-ending supply of creative solutions to even the stickiest of co-production needs. In this role he provided a link between France and the rest of the world with clients like DreamWorks, Disney, France Television, Tf1, RAI and Teletoon Canada and Netflix. After making the decision to go it alone as the founder of You and Eye Creative in 2017, Heath has set out to create a safe place to be creative and a creative place to do business.  Now as Chief Content Officer for Canada’s Mercury Filmworks he continues to prove that a French Kiwi is indeed a very rare bird.    This episode is kindly sponsored by CelAction, developers of CelAction2D, the 2D animation software used on some of the most successful series in the world, like Peppa Pig, Bluey and Mr. Bean.

    1h 16m
  2. 04/30/2020

    #1: Alison Warner - Case Study of Developing a Show with 'The Deep'

    Alison Warner recently joined Blue Zoo Productions as MD of a brand-new division, Blue Zoo Rights, and is charged with managing the company’s portfolio of original content, which includes BAFTA award-winner Numberblocks and BAFTA nominated Digby Dragon. Prior to that, Alison served as Vice President of I.P. Sales, Acquisitions and Co-Productions for Technicolor Creative Development. Alison developed and implemented funding and sales strategies for TCD’s in-house animated properties and also sourced new properties to acquire or co-produce.  In this role, she was instrumental in securing the rights to The Deep and is part of the team that helped put Technicolor’s animated shows Atomic Puppet and The Deep into production through structuring an Australian/Canadian co-production for The Deep and a French/Canadian co-production for Atomic Puppet. She pre-sold The Deep to key broadcasters across the world including Super RTL, BBC, ABC, YLE, SVT, NRK, France TV, Ketnet, Universal Kids and Netflix.  Alison also helped manage the exploitation of all rights of The Deep worldwide. The Deep has become a global hit, topping the children’s TV charts in the UK, Germany and Australia with toys and books already launched autumn 2018.  Alison is passionate about making outstanding animated shows for children of all ages that excite, enhance and entertain. She is also on the Advisory board for the Children’s Media Conference.   This episode is kindly sponsored by CelAction, developers of CelAction2D, the 2D animation software used on some of the most successful series in the world, like Peppa Pig, Bluey and Mr. Bean.

    51 min

About

In this podcast I criss-cross the animation industry, speaking with interesting guests about their daily jobs, insights and inspirations as they might or might not relate to animation. The best thing about this is, I get to ask great guests some really fundamental questions!