Patrick Smith (artist)


Patrick Smith is an installation artist, animator and filmmaker. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His formative years were spent as a storyboard artist for Walt Disney, and animation director for MTV's Daria and the Emmy-nominated Downtown. Smith spent five years in Singapore as a professor at the graduate film program for New York University Tisch School of the Arts, under artistic director/filmmaker Oliver Stone. Patrick is a fellow of the New York Foundation of the Arts and a curator for multiple international film and animation festivals. He lives and works in Montauk New York with his wife, Kaori Ishida and their daughter. The beginning of his animation career has been told by himself like this:
In 1994, I was in college, and one night decided to animate something strange. I didn't know how to draw, let alone animate, so I just did something abstract. A friend of mine told me I should put an logo on it and send it to MTV. So I mailed a VHS of it to "MTV Networks" the address I got from the phone book. About two weeks later I got a call from a guy named Abbey, who said that they wanted to buy it. I remember the day he called, because it was the same day that I got my rejection letter from Cal Arts. I re-animated the same thing, a bit tighter. The spot won a BDA award and a Jury Prize at the 1995 Holland Animation Festival. After I finished the ID, MTV offered me a job on Beavis and Butthead, which was my first ever studio job, and which brought me to New York City.

His directorial debut was for the Emmy-nominated series Down-Town, continuing on to direct the popular animated series Daria. Since then he has directed a handful of short films which earned him much reputation at film festivals worldwide as well as numerous awards. Smith and his studio produced the animated series "Blank on Blank" for PBS digital studios an innovative animated show that visually illustrates rare audio interviews of famous artists, actors and musicians.

Filmography