Faculty

Loosli has worked in animation and live action production for over 25 years. He began his career as a clay animator for television commercials at the age of 15. While attending Brigham Young University he received a Student Emmy for his clay animated film entitled Nocturnal. His professional work includes working for both DreamWorks Feature Animation and Buena Vista Motion Pictures at Disney, as well as supervising and coordinating global production efforts on various independent productions. Loosli is the co-creator of the Animation Program at Brigham Young University where he currently serves as the director of the program. He teaches traditional animation, storyboarding and visual development classes while overseeing the creation of both traditional and computer animated projects. In April of 2010, Loosli was listed as one of ten professors in the article Leaders in Learning from the magazine Variety. He lives in Draper, Utah with his wife and two children.

Seth studied Animation and Computer Science in college, then jumped directly into an internship at Pixar Animation Studios. He spent over three years at Pixar, starting out rendering final film frames for Cars. His principle role was an Effects Technical Director, creating environmental effects (dust, water, explosions, etc.) for Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up. Now he is teaching 3-D animation art classes and doing research in physical dynamics simulations for film.

Parris K. Egbert is a Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. He received a B.S. degree from Utah State University in 1986 with a dual major in computer science and mathematics. Upon graduation, he worked for a time for Hewlett-Packard. He then attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he completed masters (1990) and doctoral (1992) degrees in computer science. Upon completion of his Ph.D., Dr. Egbert joined the BYU Computer Science faculty. In June 2008 he was appointed Chair of the Computer Science Department at BYU.

Dr. Egbert's research interests include real-time 3D computer graphics, global illumination for computer graphics, tools for computer animation, and the creation and navigation of virtual environments. His work has been published in SIGGRAPH, CVPR, Transactions on Graphics, Computational Intelligence, and other journals and conferences. Dr. Egbert is a member of the executive committee for the Center for Animation at BYU; he and his students have contributed to several of BYU's award-winning animated shorts in the past few years.

Dr. Egbert and his wife, the former Lori Gurr, are the parents of nine children.

Craig Van Dyke is an alumnus of BYU’s Animation Program. He has 17 years' experience in both the commercial and feature animated industries. His work has included roles as a CG supervisor, animator, modeler, and storyboard artist. He is best known for his work in previsualization. He has worked on numerous films from Dreamworks Animation, Digital Domain and Netflix. He has taught at Art Center, Chapman University and now full time at BYU. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he does layout work for Netflix Animation and was most recently the Previs Lead for the animated feature Over the Moon directed by Glen Keane and John Kahrs.

Sam Nielson graduated from Brigham Young University in 2007 with a Bacherlor's degree in Animation. He later returned to to BYU as a part time teacher for the animation program, and in 2014 became an Assistant Teaching Professor for the Visual Arts Department and later for the Department of Design.

While at BYU, Nielson was involved in the production of Pajama Gladiator, a Student Academy Award-winning short film. Nielson pitched the original story, worked with Joe A. Olsen to do the majority of the character and environment pre-production art, and animated a couple scenes including the "Cyclops freaks out scene" at the end of the battle. In 2008, Pajama Gladiator won the Producer’s Choice and the Viewer’s Choice awards at the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival. Pajama Gladiator also received second place at the Student Emmys in 2009.

Nielson has since worked as a concept artist for Disney Interactive Studios: Avalanche Software in downtown Salt Lake City. He also occasionally does freelance illustration for various publishers. Nielson lives in South Jordan, Utah, with his wife Marilyn and their eight children.

Darl Larsen is the Graduate Coordinator and Associate Professor of Theatre & Media Arts at Brigham Young University. His emphasis is in film genres, film and theatre history, history of animation, screenwriting, and popular culture. He has published Monty Python's Flying Circus: An Utterly Complete, Thoroughly Unillustrated, Absolutely Unauthorized Guide to Possibly All the References From Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson to Zambesi (2008), as well as Monty Python, Shakespeare and English Renaissance Drama (2003). He is currently working on an animation history textbook, has taught the History of Animation for Animation majors course since its inception, and is the married father of seven.

Nathan’s professional experiences include animating for film, television, video games, theme park rides, and commercials for companies Disney, Universal, Marvel, and others. He earned his MFA in Film and Media Arts from the University of Utah in 2014 and his BFA in Animation from BYU in 2003. He loves animation, drawing, fly fishing, and strawberry milkshakes.

After a short career in Architecture, Brent was hired at BYU in the Design Department in the College of Fine Arts and Communications. Brent’s charge was to help with new technologies and as such he taught classes in Interior Design, Photography, Industrial Design and Automotive Design. Since there was so much interest by students in the new emerging area of Computer Graphics, Brent created a class in that area, open to anyone. This was the early incubation of what became the interdisciplinary Animation Major. He was privileged to work with faculty in a few other departments to create that major.

Brent’s teaching career spanned nearly 40 years at BYU, including a few years as an adjunct professor while still working in Architecture. While at BYU, Brent was awarded several Teacher of the Year awards from his Departments, as well as the University “Alumni Professorship Award”. He was awarded the ”David Evans Endowed Professor of Computer Graphics” while working in the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and retired as the Director of the Center for Animation while in the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.