Joel Parod has worked as a professional artist in the animation industry on features, shorts, and commercials since 1996 as a BG painter, vis-dev painter, concept sketch artist, environment and prop designer, character painter, color key artist, illustrator, and more.  

Going back a few years, as an illustration major at San Jose State University, Joel started painting freelance illustrations in oil paint for Interact Magazine (a Hewlett Packard trade magazine), West Magazine (San Jose Mercury News), St. Martin's Press and others. His illustrations won 2 student awards at the New York Society of Illustrators (1992, 1994) and was published in the LA Society of Illustrators (1995) and Spectrum 12 (2005).

 

His first taste of working in animation and digital art came at The Learning Company in Fremont, CA, an educational software company in the East Bay area. He worked in the art department doing everything from digital ink & paint to animation to design, and used an early version of Photoshop, as well as 2 other digital art programs that don't exist anymore. 

Circumstances greatly changed when Joel landed a spot in a once in a lifetime training program at Warner Brothers Feature Animation in 1996. He relocated southbound to Glendale, CA, to be trained with 11 other lucky people about the production of 2D animated feature films and the different animation departments by seasoned professionals. He was ultimately trained to be a traditional background painter with acrylic paint on illustration board and cells, resulting in his work on Quest for Camelot and The Iron Giant, as well as concept and development art for Osmosis Jones.

Joel received an Art Director credit for color and lighting keys for the 2001 Annie Award winning short, "Hubert's Brain" and worked at a couple different small studios that both closed down. He began taking figure drawing and figure painting classes at the American Animation Institute, as well as storyboard and layout design, continuing with some of the same great instructors he had at Warner Brothers. He also refined his Photoshop and Flash skills while working for a variety of studios including Stan Lee Media (The 7th Portal), Warner Brothers Animation (Duck Dodgers), and WildBrain (The Ricky Gervais Show).

In 2002 he joined his animator/director wife, Claire Armstrong Parod, in the wild world of animated commercials where he worked in a variety of styles and roles as an art director, co-director, animator, editor, painter, or all of them combined for clients such as Microsoft, United Airlines, Charmin, CVS and more, including a music video for Natasha Beddingfield. Joel Art Directed the development of a 3D flower character for their only 3D commercial the Claire directed and beautifully animated in the early days of character 3D animation. They won the Microsoft campaign based on 2 animation tests using TV Paint (Mirage back then), and trained the 2D animation crew how to work digitally with the new software to be able to animate directly on top of the live action video. Joel even filmed the crew acting the scenes against tarps for blue screen effect that the editor would overlay with the live action shots for reference in rotoscope style animation. This was all very exciting all while managing the upgrade of equipment to handle the cutting edge technology of HD. Their commercials have won several awards including "Best Commercial" at the 2006 Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards for Longford Homes, designed and edited by Joel, directed and animated by the duo. Joel also hand painted animation with oil paint on the 2004 Annie Award winning United Airlines commercial, The Interview.

From 2007 - 2014, Joel worked with many talented people on the Tinker Bell movie franchise where he specialized in painting visual development illustrations of the characters, thanks to that 3D flower character he did from that commercial a few years prior. He also  painted environments, color keys, props, and other illustrations. He eventually art directed some Tinker Bell: Great Fairy Rescue shorts providing assets and determining the color and lighting of sequences, and painted color scripts for Planes II shorts. He also worked on early concept art and development for the initial pitch of Raya and the Last Dragon, but the movie was later made at Disney Feature Animation. 

 

Now know for his character paintings, Joel went on to paint many of them at Original Force 3D Animation from 2015 - 2018, as well as design and paint concept art, environments and more on the movie, Duck Duck Goose. While there, he learned Sketch Up and designed the interior and exterior of the restaurant and kitchen in 3D, doing paint-overs in Photoshop. He created a lot of concept art for 2 other films that were in development, and on 10 Lives, he painted all of the characters, designed environments and the poster, and provided detailed design pages for characters and assets with notes and references for the 3D modeling crew in China. Unfortunately, it was cancelled after most of the visual development art was done, but eventually got made at L'Atilier Animation in 2024. 

Back in action at WB - Warner Animation Group, Joel worked on SCOOB!, where he again painted many characters, environments and props, designed a few things, and painted scores of color keys. He went on to Space Jam: A New Legacy where he designed and painted several concept paintings, explored animated FX of LeBron transformation to Toon, and painted lots of color scripts. He received 2 credits for Visual Development and Backgrounds. Continuing to hone his skills, Joel earned a credit on SCOOB!: Holiday Haunt as Lead Vis Dev Artist. Unfortunately, the nearly completed movie was cancelled in the aftermath of the WB-Discovery merger for a tax writ-off. 

Working there during the transition from WAG to Warner Brothers Pictures Animation, Joel worked as a Designer and Visual Development Artist on the upcoming 3D animated film, The Cat In The Hat. Then after that, he worked in the Development Department for 2 years providing concept sketches, paintings, posters, logos, and character paints on 11 different projects in their early stages to help with project development and greenlight pitches. 

One thing is clear, Joel loves the variety of assignments and the challenges that come with them that push his artistic limits and sensibilities. He's know for quick concept sketches, finished detailed paintings, the ability to collaborate with a crew and adapt to any given style and pipeline, and the willingness to learn new tools and software.

When inspiration strikes, Joel likes to explore in creative ways through photography, strumming and plucking away at the guitar, drawing in his sketchbook, figure painting and plein-air painting, or anything that seems interesting at the time. 

 

LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/joel-parod
 

More art on Instagram:                                                                                            

instagram.com/joelparod

Photography:

instagram.com/joelparod_photography

 

Original music:

www.soundcloud.com/acoustisketch
 

​Interview:

Keyframe Magazine Fall 2022 Issue 19

pages 12-13