faculty

Artist/Animator Mike Dietz has extensive experience as an animation director, animator, illustrator, and art director in film, television, games, and location-based entertainment, with proficiency in a variety of animation techniques including CG, stop motion, hand-drawn (both digital and pencil-on-paper), and motion graphics. Early in his career, Mike pioneered innovative animation processes that allowed hand-drawn animation to be successfully incorporated into video games and has since been a driving force on numerous projects integrating hand-drawn and hand-crafted elements into games and other interactive media. Using these techniques in conjunction with his passion for animation, Dietz set benchmarks for animation quality on such highly successful video game titles as Disney’s Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, and the stop motion animated cult classics The Neverhood, SkullMonkeys, and Armikrog. Additionally, Dietz served as director for several episodes of the award-winning stop motion animated sitcom The PJs, co-directed the short Squirly Town for Nickelodeon’s Random Cartoon Show, and animated on the stop motion productions of SpongeBob, The Legend of Boo-kini Bottom, It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! and SpongeBob and Sandy’s Country Christmas. In 2008, Mike was the animation director of the Annie Award-winning Pixar’s Ratatouille video game and was nominated for another Annie Award in 2016 for his animation on Armikrog.

Mike is currently working on a variety of projects through his company Slappy Pictures, including serving as a senior animator at Dlala Studios, contributing to the development of an as-of-yet unannounced multiple platform next-generation game project. Mike is also the co-owner and animation director of Pencil Test Studios, an independent animation production and game development studio founded in 2009 by Dietz and game industry veteran Ed Schofield. Located in Orange County, CA., the studio specializes in content creation, development, and production services for games, film, and television, capitalizing on their experience working within a wide variety of game production pipelines. The studio has collaborated on numerous successful video game franchises with high-profile clients such as Disney, Pixar, and Microsoft.