Arthur de Pins

“Zombillenium”

When Sony Pictures Animation released “Hotel Transylvania” five years ago, de Pins was devastated. A graduate of Paris’ École des Arts Décos, the French animator had been developing a big-screen version of his hit graphic novel “Zombillenium,” which imagined a theme park operated by vampires, wolfmen and zombies.

“I was quite upset,” de Pins recalls, but his producer actually saw it as a good sign. “Hotel Transylvania” was a surprise hit, which demonstrated that there was an audience out there for the movie. Likewise, stop-motion studio Laika’s success with dark, fantasy-infused features such as “Coraline” and “ParaNorman” has encouraged them even further. “Making a dark film with monsters, it’s become kind of common right now,” says de Pins, who brings a playful, punk-rock attitude to the project, which features original music to match by French band Skip the Use.

After suffering in the trenches of several animation projects, de Pins branched out on his own to make comics, his bawdy “Péchés Mignons” series remains a local favorite, creating the five-minute short “The Crab Revolution” entirely on his own.

By contrast, the computer-animated “Zombillenium” took crews in France, Belgium and the tropical island of Réunion four years to make. Animators manipulated the digital tools to reduce the color palette and strip out most of the dimension and shadows to match de Pins’ signature hand-drawn style, an effect similar to Disney’s recent Oscar-winning “Feast.”

“For every shot of the movie, I took one 3D frame and worked on it in PhotoShop to erase the 3D effects,” says de Pins, who split directing duties with Alexis Ducord, visiting and Skyping with each of the studios. “Alexis was the lucky one because he got to go to La Réunion.” The film is expected to premiere at the Annecy animation festival in June.

– Peter Debruge

Megan Nicole Dong

“Pinky Malinky”

Dong grew up loving sharks, marine biology, comics and drawing and was soon making up voices with her brother for the characters she’d created after hours of drafting.

“Drawing and talking in voices is pretty much what you do when you’re pitching an animated show or an idea for an animated show,” says Dong, who is the creator of the webcomic “About Merpeople” and the sketch blog “Sketchshark!” “I had no idea that what I was doing there with my brother would some day kind of become my job.”

Now supervising director for the new Nickelodeon show “Pinky Malinky,” she previously worked at DreamWorks on “How to Train Your Dragon 2” as a story artist and as a storyboard artist on the TV series “Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures,” as well as gigs at Titmouse Inc. Animation Studios and Adult Swim’s “Metalocalypse.”

“Pinky Malinky” will follow the adventures of Pinky, a hot dog trying to get by in a human world. The show will be done in a mockumentary style, something like “Parks and Recreation.”

The artist’s journey hasn’t always been smooth — she was rejected by DreamWorks several times before finally being asked to work with the animation team there — but believes it’s crucial to push forward.

“It helps me to work on my own ideas, drawings of sharks and things that I love, because it keeps you inspired and you have a backlog of ideas you have always go to,” says Dong.

– Karen Idelson

Dorota Kobiela

“Loving Vincent”

Kobiela’s passion while at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw was painting, but toward the end of her studies her interest in filmmaking grew to the extent that she next attended Warsaw Film School. There, she combined her twin passions to create the animated short “Loving Vincent,” which looked at a day in the life of Vincent van Gogh, executed in the distinctive painterly style of his art.

The short morphed into a feature, and 10 years after work started on the short, the feature film is set to premiere at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival in June, with international distribution already in place, and a U.S. sale on the horizon. 

Inspiration for the film, which looks at Van Gogh’s death and the events leading up to it, came from the artist’s letters and paintings. Kobiela was also influenced by the work of Russian animators Yuriy Norshteyn (“Tale of Tales”) and Aleksandr Petrov (“The Old Man and the Sea”).

Van Gogh’s paintings not only dictated the style of the animation, but they also provided a natural reference point for the story as the artist painted the objects, places and people who populated his day-to-day life. “The paintings are very cinematic; they reflect so much of his life and surroundings,” Kobiela says. “They work together to create a story.”

The cast, which includes Saoirse Ronan and Chris O’Dowd, initially shot their scenes against green screen; these were then re-created as animated sequences based on frames hand-painted by a team of more than 100 artists.

– Leo Barraclough

Kirsten Lepore

“Hi Stranger”

When “Hi Stranger,” a stop-motion short featuring a creepy bare-bottomed character talking directly to the viewer, went viral with more than 1.4 million views on Vimeo, and was even parodied on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” the film’s creator was delightfully surprised.

“My inspiration for the piece was to create pillow talk between me and the audience because that was not anything I’d ever seen done before with a stop-motion character,” Lepore says. “And I knew if it was done with stop motion it would feel more real. I knew it would make some people uncomfortable but that was something that I wanted to play with — the idea of creating pillow talk with the audience that was perhaps too intimate.”

While “Hi Stranger” put the director’s talent front and center, she was a notable creative force when the short broke out. Lepore’s unusual approach to stop-motion animation has earned her clients including Motorola, Google, MTV and Whole Foods, gigs with such companies as JibJab. She was tapped in 2016 to do the first stop-motion episode of “Adventure Time” and was commissioned to do a piece for “Yo Gabba Gabba.” She’s won both an Annie and an Emmy, and her work has played in more than 100 film festivals. Lepore is now working on an indie stop-motion feature.

“Ultimately the goal is that they will heed the message in the film, which is what the character says about all of us being worthy of being loved,” says Lepore of “Stranger.”

– Karen Idelson

Kira Lehtomaki

“Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2”

Lehtomaki will tell you she took a meandering path to Disney, but it was a one-track route. Ever since she watched “Sleeping Beauty” on the big screen at the tender age of 3, she knew what she wanted to be: not a princess, but a “drawer” for Disney, and she hasn’t looked back.

The daughter of science-minded parents, Lehtomaki studied computer science at the University of Washington instead of going to art school, because hand-drawn animation was fading and computer animation was on the rise, and “I wanted to work at Disney in any capacity.” For a time, she also studied French “because I had found out that Disney had a studio in Paris. I thought, ‘I don’t speak French, and if I desperately want to work at Disney, I want to make sure I’m available to work at any studio.'”

With her computer science degree in hand, Lehtomaki immediately sent her resume Disney, and she got a call — from the technical department. “I remember talking to someone on the phone, and at the end he asked me, ‘So, why do you want to work at Disney?’ I said, ‘Because I really want to be an animator,'” she recalls. “There was a long pause, and then he said ‘Oh, OK. I’ll pass your resume on to the art department.’ And then I never heard back.”

Then she heard about Animation Mentor, an online art school started by animators from Pixar and Industrial Light & Magic that connects students directly with animation professionals. After completing that training, she sent Disney her reel and was admitted into Disney’s animation trainee program. Her dream finally came true.

At Disney, Lehtomaki has worked her way up as an animator on such hits as “Tangled,” “Wreck-It Ralph” and “Frozen,” to being supervising animator for the Judy Hopps character on last year’s “Zootopia,” and is now co-head of animation on “Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2.”

– Terry Flores

Dave Mullins

“Lou”

Longtime Pixar animator and animation supervisor Mullins can tell you his precise super power: Perseverance.

Mullins was hired by the animation studio in 2000 and has worked on such hits as “Up,” “Inside Out” and “Monsters Inc.” He’s also been pitching ideas since 2005, getting notes from the likes of John Lasseter and Pete Docter, refining his ideas and storyboarding on weekends. His short, “Lou,” is a story about the confrontation between a bully and an unseen creature who lives in a lost & found box at a school. The idea for “Lou” got the greenlight when he found a story that was relatable to everyone from kids to grandparents.

Mullins says his father’s job meant the family moved around a lot. “And it always made me feel invisible or sometimes like I wanted to be invisible,” he says. It seems like no accident then that Mullins would create an “invisible” hero who lived in a box and was made out of things that children lost. This “guardian angel” of the playground might fight to return the lost things when a bully wants to steal them.

Though “Lou” will play in front of “Cars 3,” which opens June 16, Mullins remembers the long road of pitching and revising that brought him to this point.

“The biggest challenge was that I’d been writing and pitching stories for a while and they just never took and that can knock your confidence,” says Mullins. “But I just never gave up.”

– Karen Idelson

Julia Pott

“Summer Camp Island”

British animator and illustrator Pott will tell you she’s naturally shy — even introverted — but the writers’ room at Cartoon Network’s “Adventure Time” changed that.

“When I got hired to write for ‘Adventure Time’ it was crazy because I loved the show and I didn’t want them to feel like I was some crazy fan,” Pott says. “But then I realized I was being too quiet and I needed to collaborate more even if it meant my ideas would be criticized because it also meant my ideas could be made better.”

Pott also credits that writers’ room with her latest success — having her show “Summer Camp Island” greenlit by Cartoon Network. Prior to the network, Pott had made several acclaimed animated shorts but learned how to bring her voice to TV in a three-act structure while working on the show she’d grown to love before writing for it.

Pott’s show brings elements of her signature storytelling style — using animals to voice deep emotions in a clever and hilarious manner — to the tale of Oscar and Hedgehog, best friends who find themselves away from their parents at a summer camp run by counselors who are unicorns, witches and monsters.

While Pott calls her current project the stuff of dreams, she’s also looking toward a future of magically themed projects: “I would love to one day have some part in rebooting Casper [the friendly ghost],” says Pott. “It’s just such a beautiful story, a ghost that can’t make any friends because he’s a ghost. It’s so poetic.”

– Karen Idelson

Carlos Puertolas

“Boss Baby”

After quitting his job in the video-game industry in 2004, Puértolas made a 3D animated short called “Bath Time,” a 1½-film that chronicles the comical tug-of-war between a dog and its owner ahead of the menacing challenge of the bath. Aspiring to pursue his life-long passion of storytelling and animation, Puértolas sent the film to DreamWorks, where execs liked it enough to hire him as an animator.

“In my first year at DreamWorks, I learned more than I ever did in five years of working in video games and two years of going to school,” Puértolas says.

He emphasizes the importance of only choosing projects he feels a passionate connection with, something he found during his time as the lead animator for the titular character on the 2010 animated film “Megamind.”

“This was my first kind of experience jumping into character, concentrating on that character and becoming that character,” he says. “That was one of those moments where I felt that strong connection.”

During his work on “Megamind,” Puértolas met director Tom McGrath, with whom he worked on his latest project. Puértolas made his debut as head of animation on the hit pic “Boss Baby.” Though Puértolas knew that post meant animating less and overseeing the animation and related departments more, working with McGrath again on a project that seemed to stand out from others was worth that adjustment.

“I was really excited to be [‘Boss Baby’] because it sounded different, out of the box, almost a little strange, and that’s something I really like,” he says.

– Sarah Ahern

Dana Terrace

“DuckTales”

 “When I’m talking to students, I always make a point of telling them to take any opportunity they can get,” says animator and director Terrace.

Terrace began living that advice after an accidental run-in with the work of Japanese animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki. When she was around 10, her mom brought home a VHS copy of Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke.” Terrace’s mom thought it was a kid-friendly Pokemon story, not a mature anime tale. But Terrace loved it and just knew that whatever she’d just seen was what she wanted to create herself one day.

After years in high school and college, making a point to draw for about eight hours a day, Terrace began posting her work to her blog while a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Somehow, the creatives from “Gravity Falls” found her blog, decided they liked her work and contacted her to give her a shot at a gig on the show.

After several years on the show, Terrace pitched herself as a director for an episode of “DuckTales” and also put together an idea for a series she’s now developing. Terrace is driven to learn new things from scratch and is always looking for the next way to push herself.

“I think it was my willingness to do anything that brought me to the attention of the network,” says Terrace. “If they needed someone to do a new kind of animation for a certain scene, I would do it.”

– Karen Idelson

Nora Twomey

“The Breadwinner”

After leaving school early and working in a factory for a time, a lifelong love of drawing drew Irish animator Twomey back to school to study fine arts at 22. “I decided to study animation because it was a means to draw, and I knew that if I went into animation I could draw every day,” she recalls. That’s where she met fellow animators Tomm Moore and Paul Young, and together they founded Cartoon Saloon, the studio behind the Oscar-nominated films 2009’s “The Secret of Kells,” which Twomey co-directed with Moore, and 2014’s “Song of the Sea.”

Now Twomey is directing her first solo effort for the Kilkenny, Ireland-based studio, an adaptation of “The Breadwinner,” about a young girl who masquerades as a boy to help provide for her family in Afghanistan during Taliban rule. Cartoon Saloon was approached by Aircraft Pictures about partnering on the adaptation, and when Twomey read the Deborah Ellis novel, she knew she had to do it. “The book is so simple, but in a very beautiful way,” Twomey says. “The way [Ellis] draws the world, it speaks volumes.”

Since making an animated film is a long process, “You want to make sure you really want to get involved in the projects you get involved in,” she says, and “The Breadwinner,” which will be released in the U.S. in the fall by Gkids, was something she really wanted to do. “It’s not often you get a sense like that.”

The project also attracted Angelina Jolie, who came on board as a producer at the script stage. “She been a tremendous source of guidance,” says Twomey. “With a film as subtle and as sensitive as this, we’ve looked toward Angelina and our Afghan advisers to make sure we’re telling the story in the best way possible.”

– Terry Flores