With a distinguished career in both stop-motion and 2D animation, the veteran USC professor of animation and digital arts continues to provide indispensable artistic leadership for the animation studio.
Los Angeles-based animation studio, Six Point Harness, has named Musa Brooker creative director. In 2019 Brooker joined the studio to provide creative and artistic leadership on an high-profile streaming animated series, quickly becoming an indispensable part of the studio team. In his new role, he will continue leading the creative direction on the undisclosed series the studio is animating, as well as overseeing development and production of additional upcoming projects.
“Musa is a phenomenally talented creative director, whose work has inspired both audiences and fellow animators, and he is also a peerless leader with years of experience as an animation instructor,” noted Six Point Harness CEO, Brendan Burch. “That makes him particularly invaluable to our creative teams as we develop new ways to collaborate and challenge ourselves to excel in a new work-from-home structure.”
Brooker is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Southern California’s John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts, where he has taught for 10 years. Previously, he was a stop-motion animation instructor at Cal Arts, where he received an MFA in experimental animation in 2008. While a CalArts student, Brooker was named a Jacob K. Javits Fellow.
Prior to receiving his advanced degree, Brooker, a Philadelphia native, helped create stop-motion animation for such projects as Elf (2003), Celebrity Death Match and The Simpsons. His career has also included work on the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials and Tumble Leaf. He held positions at Will Vinton Studios, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, Shadowmachine and MTV Animation, where he worked on Daria, prior to launching a career as an in-demand freelancer specializing in stop-motion and traditional animation. He made his solo directorial debut in 2012 with the 16-minute animated musical The Story of Pines from singer Alison Sudol, which he also co-produced and co-wrote.
“I spent about 20 years in stop-motion and I absolutely love it and the experiences it gave me, but 2-D animation was really my first love, so it’s a thrill to be at Six Point Harness and working on such fantastic 2-D projects,” shared Brooker.
Brooker joined Six Point Harness last year, just as the company was delivering its work on the Oscar-winning short Hair Love.
“Diversity is one of the things I love most about Six Point Harness, it might be the most diverse company I’ve ever encountered in terms of its crew, which is incredibly refreshing,” added Brooker.
Brooker joins Six Point Harness’ founding creative director, Greg Franklin, overseeing projects for the studio, whose current and recent productions include Cosmos: Possible Worlds and the upcoming Season 2 of Adult Swim’s Lazor Wulf; the animated short Hair Love; Amazon’s Guava Island; and animated sequences for such series as HBO’s Backstories, AMC’s Dietland and ABC’s Black-ish.
Source: Six Point Harness
