John A. Davis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other persons named John Davis, see John Davis (disambiguation).

John A. Davis is an American animator who created the computer-animated television series Jimmy Neutron. He also directed the film Ant Bully after being approached by Tom Hanks to direct the film. Production on the film made Davis resign from production of Jimmy Neutron in January of 2003. He gave his position away as Executive in charge of production to Steve Oedekerk. The two business partners have been associated with various CGI animated projects for over ten years. Davis met Steve in 1995 after a successful time at Siggraph with his Jimmy Neutron character.

Before getting into CGI animation, Davis began animating as a kid by using stop motion animation and an 8mm camera. He tells the story about how he went to an animated film festival and saw the stop motion film called Icharus. He was fascinated by the film and learned that he had access to animation supplies that his parents owned. Soon he began making short stop motion animation films[1]. His most famous stop motion animated film The Bermuda Triangle[2] was made in 1981 while Davis was still attending Southern Methodist University. He graduated in 1984, and soon afterwards joined an animation company called K&H Productions, working with Keith Alcorn who was a 2-D animator. Soon enough Davis had to make the hard transition from claymation to 2-D animation, where Alcorn taught him how to work with 2-D animation. K&H did production work for commercials, public access animation, and film festivals. K&H Productions declared bankruptcy in early 1987; that same year DNA Productions was founded in Davis's spare apartment. DNA later closed its doors in 2006 as a result of mismanagement, poor decision-making, and ultimately the box office failure of "The Ant Bully".