Kat has been working in stop motion animation since 1991. Starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas through Coraline in 2009. On James and the Giant Peach she was Assistant Director to Henry Selick and continues to collaborate with him. She was DP for Some Divine Wind, which is now on permanent collection at NYMoMA. The stop motion-live action mixed short, Mermaids on Mars, won the Carmel Film Festival Animation award along with 21 other festival awards across the country. She received attention for Producing Life with Loopy on the Nickelodeon show KaBlam!
She is passionate about all forms of animation but specializes in stop motion production. Continuing in a tradition of keeping stop motion history alive, she co-hosts a podcast called The We Know Jack Show by interviewing crew from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Before working in animation, Kat worked her last college quarter at UCSD on a feature film called Break of Dawn by assisting the prop master. Kat moved to Los
Angeles in 1987 and worked on several low budget features as property master assistant. One notable film was Murder in Law with Joe Estevez (Younger brother of Martin Sheen). Having paid her dues in Hollywood, she moved to San Francisco in 1989 and continued working on features, music videos and countless TV commercials. Starting at the PA level, she worked on Dying Young, Pacific Heights and MC Hammer’s Pray to name a few highlights.
Kat met Spike and Mike in 1985 in San Diego and was part of the publicity and ticket sales team. She traveled with them up and down the California coast. She has remained a close friend to Spike and will be making a documentary about Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation, called Animation Outlaws releasing in 2020.
The Abaton Calendar is a resource created for and by voice talent, to help create meaningful connections and forge and maintain professional and personal relationships. (And hopefully, have a hell of a lot of fun in the process).