Female Director Hits Big With Kung Fu Panda 2

Dom and I were having a chat in the office the other day about Kung Fu Panda 2 and the question came up, "who's directing?" After many blank faces and scratching of heads, a quick look at IMDB revealed that the director was Jennifer Yuh Nelson. Unsurprisingly, none of us had heard of Jennifer Yuh Nelson before, partly because this is her first major directing role, but also because she is the first female to direct a major animation movie.

It's no secret that there is a lack of female directors in the film industry, nor that females are a minority within the animation and visual effects industry, but thankfully this is beginning to change. As a school heavily involved in creating the next generation of CG artists we are very keen to have more female students, and our instructors are always eager to find out the male to female ratio at the start of any course. In addition we also like to have a good mix of male and female tutors and I'm pleased to say this has certainly been easier over recent years, with the growing number of experienced females looking to teach. We've had some great female graduates off the back of our Visual Effects, Animation and Compositing courses and we'll be watching intently to see where they crop up in the industry in the future.

You can also read more about Jennifer Yuh Nelson's story here.