#4: Heath Kenny - On Bringing Process, Design Thinking and Other Best Practices to Animation Development

Starting from the ground up and with more than 20 years of experience in the animation biz, Heath is a creative executive with an extensive knowledge of animation production and the dark arts of developing a project from mind vomit into your next potential hit. After escaping the island of New Zealand, and a brief but industrious stop in the UK (he served as Animation Director on the Gorillaz music video "Dirty Harry," for example), Heath jumped ship to the land of stinky cheese and stripy tops, a.k.a. France. He took on the role of Co-Director for the second season of Cartoon Network's Robotboy. After spending eight years in France, Heath was promoted to VP of Creative Development at Gaumont Animation. In this role he drew on all his industry experience to provide a never-ending supply of creative solutions to even the stickiest of co-production needs. In this role he provided a link between France and the rest of the world with clients like DreamWorks, Disney, France Television, Tf1, RAI and Teletoon Canada and Netflix. After making the decision to go it alone as the founder of You and Eye Creative in 2017, Heath has set out to create a safe place to be creative and a creative place to do business.  Now as Chief Content Officer for Canada’s Mercury Filmworks he continues to prove that a French Kiwi is indeed a very rare bird.    This episode is kindly sponsored by CelAction, developers of CelAction2D, the 2D animation software used on some of the most successful series in the world, like Peppa Pig, Bluey and Mr. Bean.