Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546404
FALL 2026 17 D E PA R T M E N T FALL 2026 17 T H E L O C A L TELL US ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND? I've been working in animation for the last 30 years, mostly at DreamWorks, but also at Netflix and Nickelodeon. I animated on The Prince of Egypt and other 2D features, did a short stint as a CG animator, then ended up doing storyboards, which has been my job for the last 18 years. My husband Ken is also in story, and we're both originally from Canada, though California definitely feels like home now. We have a son and daughter and a very elderly poodle. T H E L O C A L A UNDERGRADUATE PROJECT EVOLVED INTO A COMPREHENSIVE RESOURCE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF LABOR IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY. At that point he knew about the 1941 Disney animators' strike, but only in broad terms. As he began to research, his interest grew in the larger history of labor during the Golden Age of American animation. He says what surprised him most was how little sustained attention professional historians paid to the animation industry. "Much of the deeper work of preserving animation history has instead been carried out by animators, archivists, journalists, collectors, and independent historians," he says. Dominguez's undergraduate paper on the Disney strike evolved into his graduate research paper on the Golden Age of animation and how animation reflected and shaped American society during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. While working on the latter, he was also a student assistant archivist at the university's Special Collections and Archives, and he was offered the opportunity to create an LIGHTS, CAMERA, LABOR! WHY DID YOU JOIN THE EXECUTIVE BOARD AND WHAT ARE YOUR DUTIES? I had not been very active with TAG until early in 2024, when I found out that a minority of our members were trying to pass a resolution to publish what I believed to be a biased statement regarding Israel's response to the terrorist attacks of October 2023. Some of our Union brothers and sisters felt particularly targeted by the message, and I realized at that point that I needed to add my voice to theirs, because I felt that we can't allow activist factions within the Union to make important decisions for everyone else. I joined the E-Board to speak for the majority of us who care about conditions at work and the viability of our Pension and Health Plan, and who just want to practice our crafts and support the industry without getting bogged down in politics or the culture wars. I joined to keep all of us on the E-Board accountable to our members, to tell the truth, and to be a voice for those who elected me. WHAT'S A FUN FACT ABOUT YOU? I was included by Jack Black's mother, Judith Love Cohen, in a book entitled You Can Be a Woman Animator, which features childhood pictures of me and other women plus artwork and stills from the movie Shark Tale. For his capstone paper to complete his undergraduate degree at California State University, Los Angeles, Matthew M. Dominguez was required to write about an event in early 20th-century American labor history. "I had always been fascinated by Disney and animation," he says, "and I often joke that if I had been creative enough, I might have become an animator instead of a historian." exhibition. He expanded his research to other university special collections, Hollywood union archives, and TAG's own President Emeritus, Tom Sito, author of Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson. After Lights, Camera, Labor! ended, Dominguez continued meeting with archivists throughout the L.A. area. "Many of them encouraged me to create an online version so that the project would remain accessible beyond its original run," he says. Using the physical exhibit as the foundation, the website gave him the freedom to add more context and create a resource that people could explore regardless of where they lived. And rather than just telling the story of beloved films or artistic achievements, he says: "It is also the story of people working together under demanding conditions to create something that would become part of the cultural memory of generations." Visit Lights, Camera, Labor! online at mattmdominguez.wixsite.com/lightscameralabor.