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Teresa Drilling

Director/Key Animator/Designer

 

 

 

 

Teresa comes to the world of animation with the passion and precision that has marked her work for more than twenty years. Fascinated since childhood by the essence of motion, she's found that pursuing it as an adult has only awakened a greater curiosity about its shifting nature.

Originally from upstate New York, Teresa attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, receiving honors degrees in graphic design and painting.

While working as a graphic designer in the multi-image field, her stop-motion short,
The Owl and the Pussycat, gained momentum over a successful festival run. HBO aired it for two years as an intermission short, it was picked up by a distributor, and garnered her an invitation to work in NYC, which she accepted.

In 1987 Teresa moved to Portland OR to join Vinton Studios. She stayed for over 14 years, becoming one of Vinton's senior creatives, as well as one of its principle mentors.

In 1999 she traveled to Britain to join Aardman Features on Chicken Run to work as an additional Key Animator under the direction of Peter Lord and Nick Park.

In 2001 Teresa branched out to offer her talents and POV to the freelance marketplace, considerable talents that are now available to Bowes Productions.

Having worked on over 50 spots, Teresa's no stranger to commercial work. She's rubbed shoulders with an odd cast of characters ranging from dancing raisins and talking potatoes, to folded paper peppers and stallions made of coal. She's worked with agencies like J. Walter Thompson NY, DDB Needham SF, Grey London Ltd., Foot, Cone & Belding NY, and Young & Rubicam NY for clients like Kelloggs, Clorox, Merck, Beechams, Tropicana, Chilis Restaurants and Elizabeth Arden.

Teresa's prime-time television credits include lead animator and character design work for three CBS prime time specials. For A Claymation Christmas Celebration, she brought skating walruses to life. For Meet the Raisins, she showed us that penguins really can dance. As part of the team on Claymation Comedy of Horrors, she designed and animated the drunken skeleton, Famine. Teresa was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation in 1991 for her animation work on that project.

She designed and developed Sesame Street's Cecille the Ball, which she created for the Children's Television Workshop with Barry Bruce, as well as directed "The Wood, the Bad, and the Hungry", a 4 minute special segment for ABC 's Home Improvement.

"What's exciting to me is the process of putting that spark of life into a place where it hasn't been before. Pushing the envelope in terms of performance, movement, aesthetics, and experience… using a variety of techniques and media... that's important to me. I'm drawn to the possibility and potential of the work, especially when it rings true."