Duke Johnson is an American

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

who specializes in

stop-motion animation Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...

. He currently serves as a director and junior partner for Dino Stamatopoulos's animation production studio Starburns Industries in

Burbank, California Burbank is a city in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Burbank has a population of 107,337. The city was named after David Burbank, w ...

Early life

Johnson was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended St. John Vianney High School. Between his second and third years at St John Vianney, he attended a summer film course at

Columbia College Chicago Columbia College Chicago is a Private college, private art college in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1890, it has 5,928https://about.colum.edu/effectiveness/pdf/spring-2021-student-profile.pdf students pursuing degrees in more than 60 undergra ...

. He graduated from the film school at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where he spent a semester studying animation in Prague. After graduating, he spent three years working as a waiter in a New York restaurant before moving to Los Angeles, where he obtained a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

degree in directing from the AFI Conservatory in 2006. At AFI, he directed his student film ''Marrying God'', for which he won 8 awards for best student film or best short film.

Career

Johnson has been nominated for

Annie Award The Annie Awards are accolades which the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood, has presented each year since 1972 to recognize excellence in animation shown in cinema and television. Originally desi ...

s in 2011 and 2012 for directing stop-motion episodes of shows such as ''

Mary Shelley's Frankenhole ''Mary Shelley's Frankenhole'' is an American adult stop-motion animated television series created by Dino Stamatopoulos. The series premiered on June 27, 2010 on Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim. It ended on March 25, 2 ...

'' and '' Community''. In 2016, he was nominated for the

Academy Award for Best Animated Feature The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for animated films. An animated feature is defined by the Academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by- ...

in the 88th Academy Awards for co-directing the stop-motion comedy-drama film '' Anomalisa'' with Charlie Kaufman. Johnson made his solo directing debut with the upcoming film '' The Actor'', based on the 2010 novel '' Memory'' by

Donald E. Westlake Donald Edwin Westlake (July 12, 1933 – December 31, 2008) was an American writer, with more than a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into ...

Filmography

Feature Film

Other credits

Television

References

External links

* * Living people 1979 births Film directors from California AFI Conservatory alumni {{US-film-director-1970s-stub