Vicky Jenson

Victoria Jenson (born March 4, 1960) is an American film director of both live-action and animated films. She has directed projects for DreamWorks Animation, including Shrek, the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, giving rise to one of Hollywood's largest film franchises. Career Biography and early work Jenson began painting animation cells at the age of 13. She attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and California State University Northridge. She "started in animation as a cell painter. She learned to paint backgrounds on The Flintstones (1960) and The Smurfs (1981) at Hanna Barbera Studios where she worked summers to cover fall semesters at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco". She later became a storyboard artist for Warner Bros., Marvel and Disney Television, and variously worked as a production designer, art director and co-producer". In the early 1980s, Jenson worked on the storyboard backgrounds on the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon series for Filmation. She was also a design and color stylist on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, the influential Ralph Bakshi reboot of Mighty Mouse, in the 1980s. She held the same position with The Ren & Stimpy Show in the early 1990s, for creator John Kricfalusi. For both Mighty Mouse and Ren & Stimpy, Jenson was among those "responsible for the development of the visual style" of the series. In 1992, Jenson was the art director for FernGully: The Last Rainforest, and the production designer for Computer Warriors: The Adventure Begins and Playroom. In 2000, Jenson began working for DreamWorks as a production designer and story artist for The Road to El Dorado. Directing career Having worked on The Road to El Dorado (2000) for DreamWorks, the studio initially hired Jenson to work on Shrek as a story artist, with the directors to be Andrew Adamson (also a first-time director) and the late Kelly Asbury, who had joined in 1997 to co-direct the film. However, Asbury left a year later for work on the 2002 film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Jenson was selected by producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to be the new director of the film. Jenson recalled her experience being brought into Shrek, and eventually tapped to direct, as follows: