Biography for
Don Hertzfeldt More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

1 August 1976, Fremont, California, USA

Birth Name

Donald Charles Hertzfeldt

Mini Biography

Co-founded The Animation Show in 2003, a festival of animation that put animated short films into more movie theaters in North America than any other in history.

IMDb Mini Biography By: es

Trade Mark

Frequently animates with stick figures

His films tend to build slowly and steadily towards over-the-top climaxes

Often favors ambiguous endings

Tends to favor absurdism and surreal humor

Trivia

Graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 1998

Co-founded The Animation Show in 2003, a festival of animation that put animated short films into more North American movie theaters than any other in history.

Was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the "top 25 directors to watch".

Although Hertzfeldt's approach to animation is traditional (pen, paper, and film), his methods are entirely self-taught and extremely unorthodox. Most of his films are created without a script; he usually begins with a concept that is created and shaped out as the months progress. This allows for creative experiments, improvisation, and a unique element of spontaneity.

Creator of some of the most popular animated shorts of all time, which have been featured in over a thousand film festivals and theatrical venues worldwide.

Hertzfeldt does not use any computers in his animation or photography process, and rarely even uses cels.. this forces him to draw every single element on the screen over and over again, and lends his films their jittery, kinetic appearance. He also forgoes using traditional "key frames" and instead simply animates "straight ahead".

Owns and uses the camera that was used to animate A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) (TV) to animate his movies.

Is half Swedish.

Collectively, his animated films have received over one hundred awards and have been featured in over a thousand film festivals and venues world-wide. His films have already been the subject of several career retrospectives.

The popularity of his work is unprecedented in the history of independent animation and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture.

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