MIKE ANDERSON
Director, writer, animator based in Portland, OR.
SELECT AWARDS
• UKMVA Nomination "Best Pop Video" (2020, Cry)
• Webby Nominated (2018, The Giant)
• Top 25 New Faces of Independent Film, 2017
• 2 Cannes Lion YDA Awards, 2017
• Vimeo Best of 2017 (The Giant)
• Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere (The Giant)
• 8 Vimeo Staff Picks
• D&AD pencil (Animation) 2017
• Fellowships at Ox-Bow, Arkansas Arts Council, Make House
• Excellence in Poster Design, SXSW 2016
• Premieres in film festivals worldwide.
NEWS
UKMVA nomination for Best Pop Video 2020, Ashnikko "Cry"
First two episodes for Smashing Pumpkin's 5 part series just dropped. CLICK HERE.
BIO
Born in California, almost flunked out of high school from ditching class and going to the library (Dewey Decimals 700-800), somehow got into art school but dropped right of there. Learned in college that DDC 700 was the N section in LLC college libraries and rolled.
Hitchhiked around the US for a couple years amassing a library card collection and working all of the minimum wage jobs (carpenter, cook, corn detassler etc) while sneaking into colleges like a much dumber Good Will Hunting. Eventually found a back door into the Rhode Island School of Design (ka-ching!) and bagged a Painting degree cum laude.
Graduated and promptly made a dubious yet exhilarating career move to Arkansas, where the paintings blurred into animation and filmmaking. Built a greenscreen in the backyard, read the seven Final Cut Pro manuals, borrowed Community Access Television equipment and dove in. Got some awards.
Clawed back up North to NYC for a second time and hustled into the Biz as a freelance propmaster/art director and ran that game for 6 years while making art movies and music videos on the side.
Did loads of commercials. No memories from that time except work memories.
Mornings/evening/weekends learned 3D animation via homemade YouTube tutorials by a lot of like 17 year old UK kids (🙏). Joined up as the animation wing briefly in a director's trio (New Media Ltd) and finally in 2016 made a full pivot away from live action after a bunch of festivals, awards and getting rep'd and stuff.
Now I got two kids, a beautiful wife, live in Portland and here jamming all this junk into the work.
These days, I'm all about Unreal Engine and realtime possibilities, hit me up for a coffee or beer once someday COVID-19 fades or a hit me on a Zoom anytime this week.
-M
