Casey Leonard
Director, Lucky; Supervising Producer Wonder Park series Nickelodeon Animation Studios
Never underestimate the role that chance or a broken arm can play in your animation career. Take, for example, the case of Casey Leonard, who had just graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a degree in Studio for Interrelated Media. “My first job in animation was out of pure luck,” he tells us. “Soup2Nuts studio in Boston was on a hiring frenzy, and a buddy who was about to start there broke his arm snowboarding, so he recommended me for a character animator job. To this day, that was one of the most challenging gigs of my career!”
This past year has been a busy one for the 38-year-old upstate New York native. After years of directing Nickelodeon’s popular series Breadwinners, he directed the new Nick TV movie Lucky and is producing the Wonder Park animated series, which will debut later this year on the cabler. “Lucky is about an unlucky leprechaun and his
best friends on a mission to retrieve his family’s stolen lucky pot of gold, thus restoring his luck,” he tells us. “The first act is comedy, the second act is heist and the third act is all action. It’s really fun!”
Leonard says learning to tell stories in a new, longer movie format was both challenging and exciting. “And we made it really fast,” he adds. “At one point in production I was launching animators up at Bardel on the second act of the movie, while rewriting and re-boarding massive sections of the final act, and doing pose-by-pose animation revisions on shots from the first act. Intense!”
The director says he grew up on ’80s classics such as DuckTales, Inspector Gadget and Transformers. “They had the best animated intros!” he recalls. “Then DragonBall came to the States. I watch a lot of that and Batman: The Animated Series.” Another favorite is Japanese helmer Mamoru Hosoda’s movies. “Every shot, moment and character is pouring with sincerity and specificity,” he explains. “His character relationships and stories are incredibly relatable and genuine — and really funny, too!”
Leonard advices animators to be less introverted and reach out, network and communicate their ideas. “Most importantly, when you get notes, drop the ego, seek the note behind the note, and address said notes with the confidence that your work will be stronger and smarter as a result.” He has high standards for himself as well. “I hope to keep striving to tell stronger, more engaging stories. I’m itching to make another movie. Maybe I’ll do that!”