A dream finally came true on the morning of January 6, 2017 for Kendall Haney, a 2013 graduate of NYU Tisch/Kanber: "The Trail to Udugu" her first script for the new series The Lion Guard appeared on The Disney Channel. She has been writing full-time for the series since September.
"This ["Udugu"] was the first episode I wrote on freelance," she explained in an email. "Boy, this whole animation thing takes a long time!"
Prior to Disney, Kendall was at DreamWorks Animation for over two years as Story/Editorial Coordinator on Kung Fu Panda and Trolls.
Kendall works alongside another 2013 NYU Animation area alum on The Lion Guard: Isabelle Gedigk, a storyboard artist at Disney TV since August 2015."Isabelle and I share a life long love of the Lion King characters," writes Kendall, "so it's incredible to both be telling stories with them."
Above is a photo of five year old Kendall in a Simba Halloween costume; on the right is Kendall on her first day working at Disney. Yes, she marvels, "This has been many years in the making!"
Jeremy Jensen, a former NYU Animation area student, recently completed a short film for Disney Junior, a romantic comedy titled "A Lobster to Remember": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2ofFNt0bhw In 2015, Jeremy was a Production Coordinator for the Disney Junior series Sheriff Callie’s Wild West.
During a brief December visit to New York, animator Aidan Terry (NYU Class of 2016) reported that he has completed work on Glen Keane's new short, Dear Basketball, based on a poem written by sports legend Kobe Bryant, with a score by music legend John Williams. Aidan reports he is staying on with Glen Keane Productions and will work with the great master animator on new exciting projects, to be announced.