James Baxter
Director of Character Animation, Netflix
James was born in 1967, in Bristol, and raised in Bishop’s Stortford, England. He started experimenting on little animation tests with a 8mm camera at age 16. James attended Cambridge College of Arts & Technology for one year and West Surrey College of Arts & Design for one year before leaving to work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit in London. James moved to California to work for the Walt Disney Company, where he worked as the supervising animator on classic characters like Belle in Beauty and the Beast and Rafiki in The Lion King. He then moved to DreamWorks SKG where he worked on Prince of Egypt, Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmeron and Shrek 2. From 2005 to 2008, James had his own studio, James Baxter Animation which produced several projects, including the hand drawn animation for the Disney feature film Enchanted, and the opening sequence of DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda. He returned to DreamWorks Animation to work on How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2, and The Croods. James is now the director of character animation at Netflix.
9:00AM - 12:30PM
James Baxter Live Animation Demo
TAAFI welcomes veterans and hobbyists alike to join us for three uninterrupted hours of audience prompted classical animation workshop, helmed by the incogitable James Baxter himself.
What can you do when James Baxter says "let me do my thing for three hours, and I'll animate whatever the audience wants!" besides enthusiastically acquiesce?
