Simon Allen

Biography

Simon Allenjoined Pixar Animation Studios in March 2006 as an animator for the Academy ward-winning feature ‘Ratatouille’ and went on to animate on three more Oscar winners for Pixar, Wall-E, UP and Toy Story 3. He has been in the industry for over 20 years and have worked on 18 feature films including ‘The Matrix: Revolutions’ and ‘Constantine’ on which I was Animation Supervisor.  He has also worked on another Academy Award winning movie, ‘Happy Feet’. He has began my 3D career at WETA as a Compositor / Technical Director on Peter Jackson’s feature film ‘The Frighteners’ in 1995. He then moved to the US to work as an animator at George Lucas’s games company LucasArts and helped produce 3 titles including “Grim Fandango” and “The Phantom Menace” in which he was Lead animator. He then went on to character animate for Tippett Studio where he became Animation Lead on “Evolution” and “Blade II”. He has just finished working on the up coming Disney Pixar movies ‘Cars 2’ and ‘Brave’ which has also won the Academy award for best Animated Film of the year 2013 .  He is now lecturing here at Murdoch University in the areas of 3D animation and Conceptual Design . Born in Australia, he grew up in New Zealand. After finishing high school, he returned to Australia and attended Film School at Perth School of Art and Design studying Film and Television and Animation.  He has taught animation at The Academy of Arts in San Francisco as well at the CMC TAFE in Perth and East Perth.  He has presented Animation Masterclasses all over Australia and have given presentations in Moscow, Annecy Film Festival in France, and iDEF and Semi Permanent in Melbourne as well as being invited to be part of a judging panel at Siggraph in San Diego and a judging panel at UC Berkeley.

Research Interest

Animation workflow: Evaluating industry practices / resources, and workplace cultures that help streamline the animation process, Film production: Short animated films, The history of animation: How principles of animation have been amended for 3D animation, Motion Capture pipeline: At present using this technology to have a better appreciation of its potential for 3d games animation, Animation for mobile devices : With emerging technology developing rapidly, I’m researching the newest practices and resources for creating applications for these devices.