Joshua Frankel Plus

User Bio

Joshua Frankel is an animator, filmmaker and visual artist. Joshua grew up in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York City in a building filled with musicians, actors and dancers. He spent most of his youth listening to hiphop and trying not to let anyone take his lunch money.

Originally trained in painting and drawing, in 2001 Joshua began creating animation and visual effects, mostly for TV commercials. After four years of shilling SUVs, shampoo and sugar water he quit his job and made his first short film, Bicycle Messengers, which fused the aesthetics of his paintings and drawings with photo-real visual effects techniques.

Since then Joshua has been working in a variety of media, attempting to use the powers he has acquired in advertising for good, rather than evil. Joshua has collaborated with his wife, Eve Biddle, to create a series of murals in Brooklyn and Queens that implant a sense of boyish wonder onto massive walls in public spaces using subject matter ranging from jellyfish to rockets.

In 2008 Joshua was commissioned to create a series of animations and short films for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Joshua has created projection design for the Lincoln Center Theater musical Happiness (dir. Susan Stroman), the Broadway musical Young Frankenstein (dir. Stroman) and the opera Mosheh (composer Yoav Gal).

He has also created previsualization animation for several feature films, including I Am Legend (dir. Francis Lawrence), Twilight: Eclipse (dir. David Slade), and Salt (dir. Phillip Noyce) as well as for the finale the video the game Bio-Shock 2.

Joshua's work has shown in galleries and festivals around the world.