Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546404
10 KEYFRAME T H E C L I M B BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE A CREATIVE CROSSROAD LED TAG MEMBER IAN GRAHAM ALONG A NEW ANIMATION PATH. When you're ready for a change, open a new door. When you can't find that door, sometimes you have to build it. Longtime Storyboard Artist and Producer Ian Graham knows this only too well. After a 30-year career spent working on such series as Danny Phantom, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents, and Glitch Techs, Graham carved out a new path for himself by initiating the Los Angeles outpost of the Australia-based Flying Bark Productions, where he serves as the L.A. Senior Vice President, Creative. Graham grew up in an entertainment- industry household, the grandson of vaudevillians and the son of Second Unit Director Bob Graham and Kate Quillan-Graham, who ran a commercial production company. "For me, that became a big foundation of what I find so useful today in my adult life," he says. "At my dinner table as a kid, you had the creative on one side and production on the other, and I could hear the debates and the things they struggled with." Graham graduated from ArtCenter College of Design where he made several key friends who helped foster his love of animation. After many years working on kids' series in the Nickelodeon universe, he began to branch out, taking his talents to Invader ZIM in the early 2000s. Having been glued to his TV as a kid watching Robotech, along with his fascination with anime and the works of Hayao Miyazaki, Graham jumped when opportunities came along to work as a Storyboard Artist on Avatar: The Last Airbender and Director on The Legend of Korra. If the path from Bikini Bottom to the Airbender universe seems unusual, Graham argues that there is a common denominator. "Having good old-fashioned drawing skills can take you quite a distance in our industry," he says. "If you have the skills and the heart, then you can make the connection between different types of shows and be able to change lanes for projects." In 2019, at the end of his stint as a Supervising Producer on Glitch Techs, Graham was at a creative crossroad. Other series work was available, but after three decades in the field, he felt the