Danny Arriaga

Danny Arriaga is a character artist and creative leader with over two decades of experience in animation. His career began at Pixar Animation Studios, where he started as a P.A. on Monsters, Inc and The Incredibles and later was promoted to Sketch Artist and contributed to films including Ratatouille, WALL•E, Up, and later served as Character Art Director on Toy Story 3.

He has also worked with Walt Disney Animation Studios as a Visual Development Artist on Wreck-It Ralph and Art Director on Prep & Landing 2, before returning to Pixar as a Character Designer on Inside Out and Character Art Director on Coco, for which he received an Annie Award.

Across both studio and personal work, Danny’s approach is guided by empathy, collaboration, and a belief in characters as reflections of lived experience. He is currently working at Walt Disney Animation Studios, most recently on Moana 2.

Vic Dal Chele

Vic Dal Chele has had a long and successful career in animationas a Storyboard artist, Storyboard supervisor, Director andProducer. His career began at FILMATION STUDIOS initially working on SHAZAM. Following that Vic worked on HE-MAN, SHERA, BRAVESTAR and others there. He also worked at Marvel on launching TRANSFORMERS and G.I.JOE.

At other studios over the last 40 years Vic has contributed to hundreds of episodes of shows like THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, SPIDER–MAN, X-MEN, SCOOBY DOO,BIKER MICE FROM MARS, ROBOCOP – ALPHA COMMANDO, STATIC SHOCK, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, MY LITTLE PONY, STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE, MONSTER HIGH, and many more.

Ian Dorian

Classically trained by Italian masters and raised by New York's comic book legends, lan Dorian is a Los Angeles-based visual artist and storyteller. He has had roles such as, character designer, storyboard artist, writer, graphic novel illustrator, art director, and, toy designer. Ian has worked for Warner Bros Animation, Marvel Productions, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, JusToys, Gordy Toys, The Toon Studios. For properties such as The Watchmen Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Avengers Assemble, X-Men Apocalypse, the Simpsons, Family Guy, Rio 2, Zombie Princesses, and Fairytale Princesses.

He’s both acted in and worked as either art director or storyboard artist for live action films and commercials such as King of Killers, Sony media verticals advertising, Under The Gun, And other productions. As a co-creator Ian conceptualized, plotted, designed, and illustrated the graphic novel Law of Resistance.

lan has lectured and taught extensively at the undergraduate and graduate level for over 25 years at art colleges and universities such as The University of the Arts, MICA, Parsons School of Design, The Joe Kubert School, LAAFA and other higher learning institutions. lan's students have enjoyed success working for every major animation studio, film studio, and comic book company

Adrian Ochoa

Adrian is an award-winning Producer who recently produced the animated short film LUKi & the Lights, about a robot that gets diagnosed with ALS, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and played in over 95 festivals. His film credits include Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, WALL-E, Cars 2, Monsters University, Inside Out, and The Good Dinosaur.

He’s also worked on various animated shorts, including Cars Toons, Day and Night, and various live-action shorts. Adrian also produced over 45 mobile games, including three with Shaquille O’Neal, and was the Production Manager on the award-winning VR animated short film Arden’s Wake, which won the Lion at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. Adrian loves writing short and feature film scripts and video production.

If he’s not in Napa enjoying some tasty cabernets, you can find him cruising old cars or spending time with his family.