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Angie Jones began her art career at the age of 4 drawing down the hallway walls outside her room. Of course, this was difficult because she couldn't stop eating the crayons. Drawing was her passion and many years later, she graduated from a small fine arts school in Atlanta, GA. called The Atlanta College of Art. After graduating in 1994, she spent a brief time creating graphics for Coca-Cola USA; but the dry, corporate graphics world held no interest for her and a few months later she began working on a television show called Reality Check at Mindflex, Inc. She created 2D animations with HiResQFX and Animator Pro. She also had her first introduction to 3D images with Topas 3D, at Mindflex. This children's show aired on both NBC and CBS affiliates in 1994.

A trip in 1995 to see a childhood friend, resulted in Angie escaping the deep south and moving to sunny California. She moved to San Diego that year to work at a studio with over 150 traditional animators called The Lightspan Partnership, Inc. Lightspan artists opened up a whole new world to her and she began to really understand the wonder of animation. She continued her journey by expanding into character animation, with the help of many traditional artists at the studio. As a female animator, she was a novelty at this traditional studio; but even more rare was her understanding and willingness to create animation with a machine. Although she was trained at a fine art school, she wasn't afraid of the computer. Over the next 3 years, Angie animated on many brightly colored and politically correct cinematics for over 25 educational PSX games, which were introduced into the school system for K-6 as learning tools.

About this time, Angie thought "man-o-man, I gotta' make a cool character that will make people laugh, so I can start my plan of world domination!" In 1997, she started The Spicy Cricket Web site. The initial idea for the site was to help pitch her "spicy" stories for a features, television and short films - as well as "pimp" her skills out as an animator. The plan kind of back fired. Now, people refer to her as "cricket girl" or "spicy chick" when she shows up for a job to animate. Many people ask where the cricket came from? It's an ancient Costa Rican secret and if we tell you, we will have to kill you.

In 1998,she left Lightspan to work at Oddworld Inhabitants. Oddworld introduced her to high-end graphics production on big purple machines called SGI's with Alias and Maya. This was a scary and very technical atmosphere. You had to write scripts and code for the feature based pipeline to get your animation rendered and she thought might drown in the computer geekdom of it all. BUT, there was also a high standard for art running through this company and Angie learned everything she could there about how to make the prettiest pictures and best animation you could with a computer. Oddworld allowed her to focus on characters and concentrate on animation skills solely.

In June of 2000, Angie left Oddworld to become the Lead Artist Angel Studios on a couple games being developed for CAPCOM Japan. Among others, she helped develop the Dino Crises 3, Red Dead Revolver and Oni 2 video games while at Angel. Her trips to Osaka, Japan are clouded with much sake and sushi, but it was an amazing learning experience. After Angel, Angie moved to Sony Pictures Imageworks to work as a character animator on the Stuart Little 2 production, released April 2002. This was her first animated film and the team was full of Disney animators. She had come full circle since the Lightspan days in 1995, and was now around folks who started in animation by drawing again!

Angie's credits since Stuart Little 2 include: Power Puff Girls, Garfield, Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Freddy VS Jason, The Cave, Stealth, Zoom, Pan's Labyrinth and Xmen 2. She has also had a hand animating in some commercials like the Geico gecko and as supervising animator on Disney's 50th anniversary spots with Stitch riding a motorcycle and Goofy and Mickey Mouse and Jiminy Cricket wishing upon a star! Angie has just finished a new animation book she wrote with a traditional animator she met at Rhythm and Hues - Jamie Oliff. This book bridges the gap between 2D and CG. The concept for this book has been on her mind since her first days on Stuart Little 2. Working with such amazing artists who had used a pen an paper up until then and now were expected to animate with a computer made quite an impression.

There are over 40 professional directors, supervisors, animators and story people who contributed to this book and believe in it. To find out more about the book go to the Thinking Animation web site. To find out more about Angie go to The Spicy Cricket web site.

Angie's thoughts on Production: Its simple. Listen, Stay Honest, Experiment, Think, Intuit, Feel and Learn. Listen. Because your supervisor knows what the client wants. Be honest to your character. Because that is the only way you will get into his head and create a real performance. Experiment. Break any and all rules to animation while following them to create something different. Use what you know, think, intuit and feel about the shot and you cannot go wrong. Understand that you always have something new to learn. Every frame counts, every finger, every eyelid shape, every arc, line of action... everything. The details are just as important as the broad strokes. Remember this, if nothing else. Finally, drink lots of Diet Coke - I hear it has caffeine to keep you awake.