Q: Can you tell us a bit about your background and work in the animation field and your current artwork/practice?

A: I’m Dennis J. Woodyard, an Emmy Nominated TV Animation Producer / Director, storyboard and journeyman artist. I was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (1969-1972) I moved to Manhattan upon graduation to pursue my commercial art career, first in illustration, designing several book jackets, and illustrating children’s strip films of folk tales and myths, produce by Spoken Arts Inc. Several filmstrips earn awards for “Best Films and Filmstrip for the Year, 1976-1977.

In the late 70's, I moved into the animation field, first on animated novelty record TV spots, like “Goofy Gold” and “Old Country Fun”, then doing graphic animation and special effects for commercials and TV show openings including HBO Sports and ABC TV station IDs, which earned two awards from the Broadcast Designers Association (1979 and 1981) In the 80's, I progressed to animated adventure shows. On my first series, "Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers", I was one of the original creative team, then designed characters and storyboarded whole episodes. From there I moved to a staff artist position with Rankin-Bass, (best known for the Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer Christmas special) working on Thundercats, SilverHawks, The Comic Strip Show (TigerSharks, Mini-Monsters, Karate Kat, and Street Frogs) TV animated series. I designed all the secondary characters for the last 30 ThunderCats shows and wrote two scripts, "ShadowMaster" and "Well of Doubt”. After Rankin and Bass closed up shop I went back to freelance art assignments for HBO and King Features. Next, I was the art director and storyboard artist for a 30 minute animation special, "Merlin and the Dragons" for Lightyear Entertainment. which aired on PBS and is now on DVD. I drew comic art on Captain N Nintendo Comics for Valiant Comics.


After moving to Los Angeles, in 1994, I continued to work on various television animation shows as producer/director including Universal's "Exo-Squad", Disney TV Animation's "Gargoyles", Columbia Tri-Star's "Men in Black: The Animated Series". I joined Saban Entertainment, in January 1998, where I worked on "Bad Dog", for Fox Family cable network. The following year I was producer / director on Saban's "Nascar Racers” for two seasons.


After leaving Saban in April 2001, I served as consulting animation director for Rankin /Bass' primetime Christmas special "Santa Baby", which aired in December 2001, on the Fox Network. I was storyboard director on Warner Bros animated series “Ozzy and Drix” and was nominated for a 2004 Daytime Emmy. I also did storyboards for "X-Men: Evolution" for Film Roman Inc, “Alien Racers”, “Stan Lee’s Stripperella”, “Legend of the Dragon”, “Biker Mice from Mars”. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, “Tutenstein”, “Firehouse Tales”, and “Baby Looney Tunes”. I also did some storyboarding on direct to DVD projects like Stan Lee Presents “The Condor”, Marvel’s “Ultimate Avengers 2” and “Dragonlance - A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Tale”.


I left the LA animation business in 2008 and relocated with my family to Rochester, New York. I found a position with the Brighton Memorial Library as a Library Tech. Followed by 13 years with Monroe Community Collage (Downtown Campus) as a Senior Library Clerk.  Upon retirement, I still work on creative pursuits, under my Journeyman Artist/Dragonfly Entertainment banner via my Youtube channel, Facebook,  and Blogger site. I participate in the annual online Inktober drawing event since 2017. 


My motto remains: “It is my goal to accomplish, in my life, something of value and do it with self respect and integrity” - Cornel Wilde (American actor and film director)



Q: Who do you consider to be your greatest artistic mentor? What did they teach you?

A: I can’t name a personal mentor, but only the many comic book artist he fueled my creative interest starting into my teen, the main one being Jack Kirby of Marvel Comics, and than fantasy painter Frank Frazetta. But, really there were many, many more. 



Q: What advice do you have to young/emerging artists?
A: My main advice is the learn traditional artistic methods and materials. Writing prompts won’t make you an artist.



Q: How long have you been a member? and Why did you join RoCo?
A: I joined ROCO two years ago, I have shown artwork in the Member’s Exhibits, and the 6x6 exhibits, I joined to take the opportunity to share more of my personal artwork accumulated over the years, and new pieces to come. 


Q: What do you wish to see more of in our local art scene?

A: I look forward to exploring more of the local multimedia art scene.



Q: If you could have one artist create your portrait, who would it be and why?
A: That a tough question, since I’m not a big fan selfies of portraits of myself. One artist I'd want is the late, great, Norman Rockwell. He was one of my inspirations in my teen years. I had the honor of standing in front of his famous Ruby Bridges painting in the Norman Rockwell exhibit in Utica, NY, in 2022.



Q: We like to wrap up with something more off the wall…what do you do that’s still analog?
A: My artwork solidly grounded in analog techniques. Coming from wanting to create comic book art, I’m most comfortable with pencil and paper rather the a computer.