June 6, 2005

ANIMATION HOUSE DUCK ADDS DIRECTORS

LOS ANGELES - Independent animation house Duck has signed several new directors including: Tom Gibbons, Chris Harding, Peter Kaboth, Andrew Murdock, and 512kb.

Tom Gibbons's career spans over 20 years. In 1991 he began animating his own short films. His professional employment includes time at Skellington Studios and Tippett Studio. His work at Tippett includes the Sci-fi hit "Starship Troopers," among others. His stop-motion short "The Hunger Artist" garnered seven film festival awards.

Chris Harding is an independent animator living in Kansas City who began his career as a syndicated newspaper cartoonist and illustrator. His short films include "He's A Good Monkey," "Make Mine Shoebox," "Robot Family," and "Learn Self Defense." Recently, "Learn Self Defense" won two awards at the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee.

For the last 11 years, Peter Kaboth has been animating short films throughout Europe. Born in Poland and educated in Germany, Kaboth has skills in both 2D and 3D animation, compositing, directing, and modeling. In 2004, Kaboth freelanced at several German studios including Jep productions where he worked on the 2D serial "Ritter Rost Lieder" and Elektro Film where he worked on "Tsunami," a 3D television movie. His 2003 short film "Fallen" garnered numerous awards.

Andrew Murdock has been working as an artist, animator, composer, and sound designer for the last 20 years. His early work was as a sound designer and recording engineer at Earwax Productions and Hyde Street Studios. More recently, he has worked as a 3D animator at PDI, Mondo Media, and Xaos. In 2001, Andy founded his own animation studio called Lots of Robots, based in San Francisco. The studio is currently working on an episodic series titled "LOR."

Tak Okubo is experienced in Flash animation. Having worked at an advertising department of a movie studio after graduating from university, Okubo, or 512kb, as he is professionally known, became an animation director in Japan. Since 2004, 512kb has shepherded the production and direction of a number of commercial works for companies in Japan including Maxell, Epson, Subaru, and many more. 512kb has also directed commercials for Japanese toy manufacturer Banpresto.