Eric Darnell & Simon J. Smith

Eric Darnell
Born August 21, 1961 · Prairie Village, Kansas, USA
Eric Darnell was born on August 21, 1961 in Prairie Village, Kansas, USA. He is a writer and director, known for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), Madagascar (2005) and Penguins of Madagascar (2014).
Simon J. Smith
Simon J Smith is an award winning writer/director and 30 year computer graphics veteran with over 38 combined years of film, television, and post production experience in telling engaging stories with compelling characters. He is known mostly for his directing feature animation work at PDI/DreamWorks Animation, directing the feature film "Penguins of Madagascar" starring Benedict Cumberbatch and John Malkovich, and previously the Golden Globe nominated "Bee Movie" starring Jerry Seinfeld and Rene Zellweger. After his DreamWorks tenure he found himself at Unity Technologies writing and directing three real-time short films for Disney. Titled "Baymax Dreams" the shorts delve into mind of the "Big Hero 6" character Baymax, and creating a future pipeline using the Unity engine, ask the question "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" Well apparently they do. Simon J Smith won a 2018 Technical Emmy writing and directing "Baymax Dreams" During his tenure at PDI/Dreamworks, which he called his home for over 19 years, he created the Layout Pipeline for the second ever computer animated film "Antz", and served as Head of Layout (cameraman/cinematographer) for that film, and also for the first ever animated Oscar winning film from PDI/DreamWorks "Shrek". Then he was chosen to start directing projects for DreamWorks which included "Shrek Imax" the first stereoscopic 70mm film for DW, the Universal theme park ride "Shrek 4D", and short films, including "Far Far Away idol" starring Simon Cowell, and "The Button of Doom" starring Will Ferrell. Before coming to the United States in 1997, Simon was Directing, Editing, Animating or FX Supervising at top London post production houses including The Mill, Framestore, VTR, SVC TV, and ad agency BBDO for 16 years on various projects, commercials, or music videos including Apple, Nike, Honda, Pepsi, VW, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, George Michael, to name but a few.