Ken Kinoshita- Ex-Disney Artist at the Inland Empire!

Ken began his art training in the early 1980’s attending Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. Later he attended California State College Fullerton in Fullerton, California. While attending Mt. San Antonio College, Ken attended Classes offered through the Screen Cartoonist Union. During this time Ken also began taking animation classes Taught by renowned animation artist Cornelius Cole. After graduating from California State Fullerton with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Ken worked as a freelance illustrator. During this time Ken applied and received

A job with DIC Enterprises, which would lead to work with, Saban, Film Roman, Klasky-Csupo Studios, Hanna-Barbara Studios, Warner Brothers Television Studios, Disney Feature Animation Studios, DreamWorks SKG Studios, Disney Television Studios, Disney Studios Tokyo, Japan, SOB Studios, Auckland New Zealand and many commercial Animation studios such as, Playhouse Pictures,West Indigo, Duck Soup, Bagdasarian Studios, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, Mike Joens Productions, Film Fair,O pictures, and many more.

During Ken’s time at Disney Feature Animation, Ken worked on: The Prince And The Pauper, Beauty And The Beast, Lion King, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback Of Norte Dame.

In 2000, Ken began teaching various classes at California State College Fullerton, and Mount San Antonio College. In 2006, he started his own company with a few colleagues from Disney and continues to do freelance character design. In 2007 he joined the faculty at Art Institute Inland Empire teaching most of the traditional animation classes where he continues to teach today.

Michael Swanigan- 4 time Emmy winner teaches at the Art Institute Inland Empire!?

4 time Emmy Award winning Animation Director / Storyboard Artist Michael Swanigan is a veteran artist with over 30 years of hands-on experience in all areas of animation. Producing, Directing, animating, layouts, storyboarding, development and writing, Michael has done it all.

He was director/storyboards for on the emmy-award winning CGI animated series Voltron (26 eps.), and Horrible Histories (26 eps.) for Mike Young Prods. He has worked as the senior board artist on Saban's Captain America and Silver Surfer and DIC's Pocket Dragons, he also worked on Sony's Men in Black, Extreme Ghost Busters and he served as award-winning producer/director of Film Roman's The Mask series seen nation wide and worked on the Simpsons, produced the animated series the Blues Brothers syndicated series for New Line. Swanigan has worked on Disney's first and only action/adventure series, Gargoyles, as well as for almost every animation studio in town, including Walt Disney, Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, DIC, Warner Bros., Bluth, Sony,Marvel, Ruby-Spears and even did some live-action storyboards for Landmark Ent.

His animation credits include the Spider-Man (the 90s series, as as well as the '80'sseries), The Fantastic Four, Iron Man,The X-Men, He-Man, G.I. Joe. Some of his many comedy series are Tiny Toon Adventures, Fat Albert, Sonic the Hedgehog, Hammer Man, Garfield and Friends, as well as two Flip Wilson prime-time specials and many more. He was storyboard supervisor on Mighty Max, for Film Roman as well as Dennis the Menace, Double Dragon, Sonic and other DIC and Hanna-Barbera series, just to name a few. There are many more to name.

Swanigan is a 30-year veteran of animated film production. He divides his time as a professional animator/storyboard artist and adjunct professor of animation at The Art Institute of California - Inland Empire and lecturing on animation. Has a body of creative work in animation: drawn, cutout, or traditional. With teaching experience, and is comfortable teaching drawing; idea development. Able to teach traditional film techniques.