Earthlight Pictures Animation Faculty

John Teton, Program Director, is a writer, film/video producer, and the owner of Earthlight Pictures, a production and training company based in the Portland, Oregon area.

Mr. Teton’s film training began with Martin Scorsese at New York University. After graduating with honors from Harvard College and working in special visual effects in New York, he earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree in filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he directed and produced B’raesheet, an international award-winning animated short film shown nationwide on Showtime. Since then he has produced videos for major corporations, worked on feature films, and trained more than 700 students in animation and live-action moviemaking, beginning at San Francisco State University, where he designed and led one of the nation’s largest animation departments. SFSU Professor Robert Bell, then Chair of the Film Department Hiring Committee, has written that student evaluations of his courses were among the highest ever received by the department, one of the nation’s largest.

Mr. Teton was appointed Senior Lecturer in Communication Arts at Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles in 1998 and joined Marylhurst University as an Adjunct Faculty member in 2006. He continues to run the Earthlight Pictures animation programs on the campuses at Crossroads School in Los Angeles, Anacapa School in Santa Barbara, and Lakewood Center for the Arts and Evergreen Community Education in the Portland area. Mr. Teton has given presentations on animation training at Pixar Animation Studio and many other locations. He is the author of the novels Appearing Live at The Final Test (2003), and Upsurge (2006) and is the founding director of the campaign for the International Food Security Treaty (see www.treaty.org).

Michael Ray Allison, Earthlight Pictures Digital Media Manager