Don Waller, or, I Meet the Most Interesting People!

"Deputy Sheriff Dawg" (He was eventually promoted and upgraded with better law enforcement equipment)

Those of you who have been readers of mine for a few years know that my family Christmas Eve tradition is to have a party and wait for the Magical Christmas Caroling Truck to go by. This year, my dad invited a couple I hadn't met before. He told me he had met them through working with The Visual Effects Society, so I knew that meeting them was going to be a bunch of fun.

What I did not realize at the time was how talented both of them are!

I'm not going to talk about the lovely woman I met, because I haven't asked her for permission, I will talk about her husband, Don Waller. Here's the bio he authorized me to post:

Don Waller hails from Pennsylvania and has lived in LA for 26 years. He had many artistic inspirations as a child, with his older brother Harry being the person who taught him how to draw. In later years, Don discovered the work of Ray Harryhausen and became hooked on stop motion animation. Moving to LA in 1986, he has since worked as a freelance animator on many feature films, television programs and commercials. Jurassic Park, Pee Wee's Playhouse, The Addams Family films, Robocop 1 and 2, Peter Jackson's King Kong and many others. Don continues to work in the field of CG animation and in his spare time, does his own personal art projects.

 "Miller Mouse" (This illustrates that even cartoon characters can go through a mid life crisis!)

"Bob meets The Beatles" (We never saw THIS episode made, did we?! Ha! And it's based on the TRUE account....)

 "Dennis, the Public Menace" (After all, he always was sort of a problem child. Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell lost complete control of him during his teen years!)

Don and his wife were kind enough to let me natter on about my ceramic art, and he and I even got to talking about tombstones! (He uses insulation foam, too!) He's a very low-key, self-effacing kind of guy, so while I knew he had done some pretty cool stuff in the industry, it wasn't until he later sent me the link to his demo reel that I got a true sense of how amazing his track record truly is!

"Casper's Halloween prank"

"Mr. Magoo's Sci-Fi special"

"Bad day in Bedrock"

You should check out Don's IMDB page if you want to get a better sense of how much work he's done.

Anyway, it was a great experience to connect with both him and his wife. They're both just delightful people, and I'm so glad my dad has friends like them to visit with. Don was kind enough to ask me to send along any pics of new artwork I do, so I'll definitely put that at the top of my to-do list once my new stuff starts coming out!

By the way, I've used all of his images with permission, so please be sure to respect his copyrights on them! Thank you, Don, for being gracious enough to share your work with all of us!