![\"Terry](\"https:\/\/www.porticomagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/TerryDankowych.jpg\")
With Sony Pictures Imageworks since 2017, Terry Dankowych is a busy animator. He has made vital contributions to the popular animated features Smallfoot<\/i> and Angry Birds Movie 2<\/i> and is currently part of the animation crew on another feature.<\/p>\n
Growing up in Newmarket, Ont., he aspired to be a professional athlete and excelled at football. Then he took the thrill factor up a few notches and got into motocross racing, something he was also good at. <\/span><\/p>\n But no matter what he threw himself into, Dankowych said, drawing was the one constant. Like other U of G grads who went on to become animators, he always had a thing for putting pencil to paper.<\/p>\n \u201cDrawing and trying to tell stories through those drawings was something that started pretty early for me,\u201d says Dankowych, who graduated with a BA in 2008. \u201cThere is a briefcase stuffed full of those \u2018storybooks\u2019 at my parents\u2019 house.\u201d<\/p>\n The childhood drawings were accompanied by text. Before he could read or write, he dictated the story to his mother. When paper was in short supply, he would make a drawing on his last remaining sheet of paper, erase it and draw the next one in a sequence. In this way, he may have inadvertently planted the seed of animation in his young mind.<\/p>\n His father was a computer programmer, so there was always access to computers at home. At a young age, Dankowych started using one as a drawing tool to make crude animations using simple paint programs.<\/p>\n At U of G, he had access to even more powerful computing tools. His animated experiments on them helped him gain the confidence and proficiency needed to get into a visual effects school. \u201cThe University helped me see that a career in animation was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With Sony Pictures Imageworks since 2017, Terry Dankowych is a busy animator. He has made vital contributions to the popular animated features Smallfoot and Angry Birds Movie 2 and is currently part of the animation crew on another feature. Growing up in Newmarket, Ont., he aspired to be a professional athlete and excelled at football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":null,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":null},"categories":[558],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n