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Biography
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Professor Tony Tarantini considers teaching to be his raison d'être. He has taught a wealth of animation and visual arts courses and workshops. His areas of animation expertise are: animation production, directing, storyboarding, layout, design, and art direction. He believes in helping students develop a vision of their creative identity and instill in them a belief that they can access their potential and realize it. He has been teaching at Sheridan College since the year 2000 and is currently the third year Layout and Art Direction teacher, Student Advisor, and Mentor to four production teams. In addition, he is the Animation Industry Day Coordinator for the Sheridan College exciting year-end event where animation graduates from both the BA Program and three other certificate programs showcase their talents to an International Animation Industry - (Industry Day | Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design | Sheridan College).
Tony is a veteran of the animation industry with more than 20 years of creative and management experience. He has worked in many areas of animation production. He has contributed to features and animated TV series: Magi-Nation, Redwall, Timothy , Ewoks, Beetlejuice, American Tail, Dog City, Rupert, Tales From The Cryptkeeper, Eek the Cat, Neverending Story, Blazing Dragons, Sam and Max, Ace Ventura, Pippi Longstocking and award winning animation productions that have had international recognition like the Care Bears , Little Bear, Babar, George shrinks, The Magic School Bus, Franklin and the award winning short film “Tomboy” - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1061372/.
Tony holds an MA from York University (Toronto, CA) where he researched the effects of digital technology on the Greater Toronto Area Animation Community (GTAAC). He is an active researcher and documentarian of the artists and their practice in the GTA community. His paper ‘Pictures that don’t really exist: Mitigating the digital Crisis in Traditional Animation Production’, published in the Animation Practice, Process & Production Journal in June 2012 (condenses some of this research.
He is also a graduate from the Ontario College of Art & Design University (Toronto, CA). He is fluent in Italian and studied painting, drawing, and art history for two years in Florence Italy, a place he frequents regularly and teaches often. His current research focuses on the relationships between animation theory, practice, and pedagogy: Animation Production, The Creative Process, Collective Creativity, Personality and Creativity, Animating creativity. He prefers Action Research and Qualitative Research approaches and methodologies. His current undertaking is an online venture designed to promote, educate, and facilitate academic and production based interdisciplinary projects that engage the animation medium. He is a veteran motivational speaker and lecturer with credits that include, Ottawa International Animation Festival (Ottawa, Canada), Communication University of China (Beijing, China), Nemo Academy (Florence, Italy).
Professor Tarantini is an active member of the Society for Animation Studies, the Lead of the Society’s Industry Committee and the Chair of the 26th Society for Animation Studies Conference which is hosted by Sheridan College.
