PANELISTS
Rob Edwards
Screenwriter and producer Rob Edwards has written two classic animated films for Walt Disney Feature Animation, the Academy Award® nominated Treasure Planet (2002) and the Academy Award nominated The Princess and the Frog (2009). He also consulted on Tangled (2010), Wreck-it Ralph (2012), and Frozen (2013). He is currently writing projects for Showtime, Sony, Paramount, and Chris Rock. Rob is also known for his work on the television shows The Fresh Prince of Belair, Full House, and In Living Color. In 2012, Rob launched robedwards.net where he shares the tools he has developed over 30 years of writing professionally. He has taught and lectured for UCLA, Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, Syracuse University, Boston University, Howard University, The Organization of Black Screenwriters, CTN Expo, LMU, Digital Hollywood, The Scriptwriters Network, The Writers Store, University of California Riverside, Le Moyne College, and others.
Robert Fisher Jr
Robert Fisher Jr. most recently served as lead editor on Sony Pictures Animation’s Academy Award winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. For that film, he was honored to receive both an ACE Eddy Award and an Annie Award for Best Editing in an Animated Feature Film in 2019. At Sony Pictures Animation since 2009, Robert edited both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs films and the CGI/2D holiday short, The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol. Prior to joining Sony Pictures Animation, Robert served in editorial roles on Disney’s Aladdin and the King of Thieves, The Tigger Movie, Heffalump Movie, and Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. His additional credits include serving as executive producer/writer/editor on Murder in Small Town X, an unscripted drama series for Fox Television and Fox Broadcasting. He was also an editor/story editor/director/producer during the first four seasons of MTV’s ground-breaking reality television series, The Real World. Robert has also served as an associate producer and post-production supervisor for many television and feature projects. Currently, Robert is employed at Netflix Animation on developmental projects as well as a new, unannounced animated feature film.
Jerry Huynh
Born in Pasadena, California and raised mainly in Walnut, California, Jerry Huynh comes from a family of Chinese-Vietnamese refugees and drew upon his family roots and culture in telling, Jing Hua. He attended the University of California, Irvine, where he studied Computer Science and Engineering, with a focus on Computer Graphics. Influenced at an early age by such memorable animated films as Tarzan, The Iron Giant, and The Incredibles, Jerry came to Disney Animation as an intern in 2011. He went on to work as a Functional Integrity Test Engineer at Western Digital, and a software QA lead at Double Negative, before returning to Disney Animation as a General TD. In that role, his credits include Moana, Ralph Breaks the Internet, and the studio’s 2020 feature release.
Mohit Kallianpur
As Director of Cinematography, Lighting on Frozen 2, Mohit Kallianpur oversees the team of talented Walt Disney Animation Studios lighting artists helping bring the film to life. A Disney Animation Studios artist since 1996, Mohit served in the same role on 2013’s Academy Award®-winning animated feature Frozen, which remains the #1 animated movie of all time. Mohit also worked in leadership roles on the short, Frozen Fever as the Visual Effects Supervisor and as the Look and Lighting Director on Tangled and the short Tangled Ever After. His other credits in lighting include Ralph Breaks the Internet, Moana, Bolt, Meet the Robinsons, and Chicken Little. He first worked in Software on the 2000 feature Dinosaur. Mohit attended Birla Institute of Tech and Science in Pilani, India and, later, the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.
Floyd Norman
Floyd Norman is an animator and scriptwriter who started his career working with Bill Woggon and Katy Keen on the animated comic book series, Archie. He served as an apprentice for ten years at Walt Disney Studios. He started working as an animator on the film, Sleeping Beauty and was promoted to the story department. Under Walt Disney’s personal supervision, he worked on the story sequence for a scene entitled, “The Waltz,” in the animated film, The Jungle Book. Floyd met fellow African American animation artist Leo Sullivan and the two animators realized that they had similar interests and started working with each other on various animated films. Leo wrote and directed a short cartoon on the story of Christopher Columbus and later, the two produced an elaborate animated fantasy tale. In the mid-1960s, Floyd left Walt Disney Studios, and alongside Leo, founded Vignette Films, Inc. where they produced six animated films on the subject of black history. In the 1970s, Floyd wrote and produced animated segments for Sesame Street, Villa Alegre and dozens of other educational films. In the 1980s, he returned to Disney and worked on feature length animated films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan and Toy Story 2. At the Annie Awards in 2003, he won the Winsor McKay Lifetime Achievement Award.
Arianne Sutner
Arianne Sutner is LAIKA's Head of Production and shares Producer credits with Travis Knight on Missing Link, Kubo and the Two Strings and ParaNorman. Prior to LAIKA, Arianne produced Animation/FX for Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and served as FX Unit Production Manager for Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Her additional credits include James and the Giant Peach, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as a wide array of live-action and animated television shows, commercials, and shorts. She won the Visual Effects Society Award and was Oscar®-nominated for Kubo and the Two Strings.
MODERATOR
Jerry Beck
Jerry Beck is an animation historian and cartoon producer. His fifteen books on the subject include The Animated Movie Guide, Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide and The 50 Greatest Cartoons. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon and Disney and is currently a consulting producer for Warner Archives. Jerry has programmed animation retrospectives and animator tributes for the Annecy and Ottawa Animation Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. He has taught animation history at NYU, SVA, the AFI and UCLA. Jerry started his career in film distribution, working at MGM/UA, Orion Classics, Cannon Films and Expanded Entertainment (Tournee of Animation), before starting his own company, Streamline Pictures in 1989, the first U.S. distributor to import anime features such as Otomo’s Akira and Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle In The Sky. Jerry was instrumental in launching Animation Magazine and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has also created, written and produced animated films for various clients. His most recent animation project, Hornswiggle, aired on the Nickelodeon. Jerry co-created Cartoon Brew and co-wrote the blog for nine years. Today, he edits two blogs, Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, and is president of ASIFA Hollywood.