Jan Maas - Bio

Jan Maas is a character animator, animation director and storyboard artist currently based in Portland, Oregon, United States. His main focus for many years has been feature film stop-motion animation, mostly working at LAIKA, animating on films such as Missing Link (2019),  Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Coraline (2009).

He was awarded the 2016 Annie Award for “Outstanding Individual Achievement For Character Animation in a Feature Production” for his work on Kubo and the Two Strings by ASIFA-Hollywood. He was also one of the key animators on the Oscar-winning animated short Peter and the Wolf (2005).

With an animation degree from Volda-College in Norway, and a strong background in drawing and anatomy, Jan works in Europe, Scandinavia, Australia and the US. Other noteworthy credits include The Boxtrolls (2014),  ParaNorman (2012), The Pirates - Band of Misfits (Aardman 2012), $9.99 (2008), Max & Co (2006), as well as animation directing/animating on the much-loved TV series Pingu (2005).

Jan is currently splitting his time between being a new dad and freelance work. He is scheduled to join the animation team of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio in 2020, a highly anticipated stop-motion feature currently underway in Portland, Oregon.

For information on availability and rates, as well as other animation-related services such as consulting, teaching, mentorships and speaker engagements, Jan can be reached at janimations@icloud.com or via Instagram and LinkedIn.

2016 Annie Award for “Outstanding Individual Achievement For Character Animation in a Feature Production”:

To be voted this award by my industry peers, so many whom I deeply admire and personally look up to, was such an incredible honor. My ever critical and self doubting animator’s soul never expected this and will be forever be deeply humbled, thank You.

A few words about the work that was submitted:

During the production of “Kubo” as we simply called it back then, I was incredibly lucky and humbled to be given the “Cave by the Lake” sequence, a very emotional and quiet part in the movie, in which Monkey reveals herself as Kubo’s mother and tells the story of their family. Shooting on two cave sets that were set up simultaneously to easier facilitate return angles and bounce from set up to set up, the whole sequence still took over 6 months to animate. 

The shots submitted were mostly all my own animation, but I cannot claim credit on all of the shots in the sequence of course, some of which were animated by others due to scheduling and other factors. A large part of the sequence itself, including some elements of the submitted work, is some incredibly beautiful animation done by Jerremy Murphy, an assistant animator at the time, who animated most of the floating paper figures moving around the cave powered by Kubo’s shamisen magic.

My thanks and credit for this sequence also go to the whole incredible team at LAIKA of course, and especially to the director Travis Knight, who really helped me shape and restrain the performance in my animation. He would always urge me to dial down my performances, “less is more” he would say, and “no blinks!”. The latter part I always thought to be kin of funny, as Kubo’s opening line in the movie is “If you must blink, do it now!”. 

Thank You again, I couldn’t have done this without you all.

Jan