Film and Video Studies alum’s passion for animation led to two Academy Award nominations

ckearney — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:39:55 +0000

Film and Video Studies alum’s passion for animation led to two Academy Award nominations ckearney Thu, 05/21/2026 - 13:39

91�� alum Brendan Gottlieb, BA Film and Video Studies ’15, has been working at Disney as an animator since 2016. In 2025, he worked on two Academy Award-nominated films: he was an animator on the feature Zootopia 2, nominated for Best Animated Feature, and the animation supervisor for Forevergreen, nominated for Best Animated Short Film.

91�� alum Brendan Gottlieb on the red carpet. Photo provided

His previous work for Disney includes Moana, Wish, Encanto, Raya and the Last Dragon, Frozen 2, Wreck It Ralph 2, and Moana 2.

Gottlieb said that his love of animation started early. When he was in 10th grade, his dad gave him 3D animation software. “My dad had got my brother and I this really basic 3D program, where you could model characters and environments, and then make them move,” he said. “I was really into video games at the time, played for hours, but then that [software] sort of became like a video game. I could create my own worlds and stories, and I really just ran with it.”

He pursued his interest by watching online tutorials and using the software to create short animated films he posted on YouTube. After an animation course in high school, he learned to use the industry standard Autodesk Maya software, and a whole new world opened up for him.

“I could do all these cool and fun things that kind of made the animation look more sophisticated, and it was great. By the end of that year,” he recalled, “I was teaching the teacher, and I was also helping her teach her night class.”

Gottlieb credits his senior project in Film and Video Studies Program at George Mason for preparing him to work in the industry. He was originally planning a live-action short film until a classmate saw his designs and suggested he make an animated film instead. Gottlieb said that working on the project introduced him to animating with timelines, which he had never done before. The film needed to be several minutes long, which was a challenge. “A couple minutes is a lot in animation,” he said. “That's some heavy lifting, especially just for one person.”

Gottlieb asked for special permission from his professor to make his project only one minute long because it was animated. “It wasn't until a few months in the program that I could show an update where characters are acting and performing and moving and then I think people were like, ‘Oh, OK, this is what he's going for.’ But I do remember liking the whole process of putting it all together.”

Film and video studies professor Tommy Britt remembered that animated project and spoke highly of Gottlieb's work ethic during his years at George Mason. “I enjoyed seeing his dedication to an ambitious animated short film that many would say was impossible to achieve with the time and resources he had.”

Gottlieb’s first job after graduation was at a visual effects (VFX) house just outside of San Francisco, where he worked with a computer-generated character in a live action film.

“It was a terrible movie, but the team was fun,” he recalled, “[We were] a bunch of animators fresh out of college; we bonded a lot. Oftentimes what's more important is who you work with, not necessarily what you work on. That job will always have a special place in my heart.”

While working for the VFX house, Gottlieb applied for Disney’s Animation Apprenticeship Program and was accepted. “After three months of training we were put on the first Moana movie, and we animated a lot of the background characters,” he said. “The little coconut demons, the Kakamora, were super fun.”

When Gottlieb served as the animation supervisor for the short film, Forevergreen, he animated a portion of the shots in the film and played a role in giving it the stop-motion style, despite it being a CG-animated project. For Gottlieb and the team working on it, Forevergreen was more than just another film—it was a labor of love.

“We did the project on our own time. Nobody was paid for it,” he said. “People were just extremely generous to be working on it, and it was great to work with the directors on that, and just to see their hard work and commitment and creativity be recognized. It was an honor to be part of the project and to see it get this far.”

The 13-minute film about an orphaned bear cub took more than five years to complete and is still garnering accolades and nominations.

Drawing on his success as a FAVS alum, Brendan offers current students one essential piece of advice for thriving in the industry as an animator: Find your niche. “Figure out what you like,” he said, “what you want to do the most in the animation sphere. Then find a way to learn that skill really, really well.”

Check out a video of Gottlieb taking about animating facial expressions.

Learn more about the College of Visual and Performing Arts

Topics

Alumni

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

College of Visual and Performing Arts Film and Video Studies

Isaias A. Segui-Asad

Film and Video Studies alum’s passion for animation led to two Academy Award nominations

Related Stories

Topics