Steven Katz Email & Phone Number

New York, Los Angeles, Beijing

Moon and the Stars is my own studio that springs to life when needed. Clients vary: M&S has created motion graphics, packaging, commercials, illustration, digital marketing-- pretty much any kind of digital imaging in any format. Sometimes I do all the work, but on several occasions teams have been hired for larger projects. Like many artists, I have my commercial work and I have personal work. Moon and the Stars is often the producing entity for my independent art projects alongside commercial work performed for traditional clients.

Los Angeles

Created pitch deck, character sketches, sizzle reel and all promotional material for animated picture at Cannes, resulting in interest from Universal Studios, Focus Features and Apple TV. Led team to design characters, backgrounds, 3D environments and animation for one-minute animation test. Recruited Toy Story screenwriter to serve as producer for the feature project.

Beijing, China

Served as Creative Director for feature, television, and commercial projects. Designed and presented story boards and pitch decks. Provided tech supervision for select projects. Approved budgets. Negotiated production, talent, and distribution contracts and requirements. Oversaw schedules of all US based projects. • Sold and negotiated the first major $1.5 million project, resulting in growing the studio from 40 people to 175 people and securing first $5 million round of investment. • Acquired and produced two seasons of Wild Animal Babies television show. • Wrote, co-wrote, and sold three animation screenplays for the studio.• Established the Los Angeles studio, including recruitment of the creative team, for the movie SMART.

New York City

Hong Kong/Shenzhen

While working for Amoeba Proteus, Darren Aronofsky's NYC-based studio on their first animated feature, I was tasked with finding a studio to do the animation. This led us to Asia and GDC a Hong Kong based CGI studio with 300 employees. They were using my books in their school and so they flew me to Hong Kong to see their operation. Meanwhile, the Amoeba Proteus deal was put on hold and GDC offered me the job of completing their half finished movie, Thru the Moebius Strip, based on the graphic novel by the legendary Jean Giraud Moebius. Ultimately, I storyboarded several critical scenes of the movie and re-edited many others. We also filmed scenes with animators that I staged and edited which is faster than storyboards. Next I was off to L.A. to record new dialog by Mark Hammill and others. I completed the post production on the Fox Lot in Sydney, AU. Working in China means wearing many hats and multi-tasking. However, while it was the wild west for filmmakers, it was also a lot of fun. Everyone should live in another country long enough to stop being a tourist. It's a big world out there and NYC and L.A. are only a part of it.

New York, New York, United States

Multi award-winning, live-action and animation studio producing national spots and graphics packages for broadcast and cable. Created PitchTV a Web entertainmnent channel. Pitch was a labor of love with two great talents as partners. We had a wild run and won a few ASIFA awards, ran a movable monthly shorts program presented in NYC's hippest eateries, created a digital entertainment online called PitchTV andf helped broadcast the first HD feed to the Director's Guild in NYC and the Cannes film festival and produced a short that won 12 international awards. What made Pitch special was that we were three artists generating new ideas and challening traditional wisdom about how animation should look and how it gets made.

New York City

Curious Pictures was NYC's largest animation and live-action studio representing 16 directors including me. However, I also founded and ran their digital department which grew to be their most profitable in 18 months. Curious was really the first major commercial studio to move most of their post production to an in-house, desktop, mac-based solution. It was a tremendous concetration of traditional and non-traditional animators and artists under one roof and a very not corporate atmosphere. We did great work especially in mixed media styles combining cel, 3D animation, stop-motion, puppets and live action.

Education record

Education record