Morgan Francis

Morgan Francis began his life in animation spending his summer holidays sitting under a desk (restrained) in the Ink & Paint department of the Halas & Batchelor Studios while his mother painted cells and his stepfather animated on popular TV shows such as The Addams Family, The Jackson 5 & The Osmonds. His first 'hands on' experience was painting rabbits on the movie Watership Down (1978 Goldcrest Films). This rapidly progressed onto painting hammers for the Pink Floyd film The Wall (1982 MGM). After that there was no stopping him, and he spent a slightly hazy 10 years working in the animated commercials industry as a freelance background artist, layout artist, assistant animator, animator, checker and cameraman. Very nearly burnt out with exhaustion he took a few years off to drive a truck from London to Cape Town (6 months of fun in Africa), travel the South Pacific and end up working as a gardener in Brisbane Australia. Fun over, it was time to return to animation. He went to work on popular kids TV shows including The Animals of Farthing Wood, Noah’s Island, Pond Life and Wiggly Park (all for Telemagination), firstly as a production coordinator then production manager, and finally technical director. At Telemagination he oversaw the change from film production to Digital, helping to develop and implement the popular Animo animation software from a concept into a world beating production pipeline, taken up by Warner Bros, Dreamworks, Nelvana etc. He has worked as a technical director on two Oscar-nominated shorts, Jolly Roger (Mark Baker) and The Squire’s Tale (Studio AKA), both for Channel4, as well as producing The Lampies (52 x 11) for CBBC, and was a technical advisor on Mr Bean for ITV (Tiger Aspect/Richard Purdum Productions). In 1998, Morgan founded Spider Eye which quickly established its own reputation in commercials and short films. In 2000, Morgan was technical director on Oscar and BAFTA award-winning Father & Daughter (Michael Dudok De Wit), a bittersweet tale which explored the deep bond between a father and daughter. His short film credits include the B.A.A and Annecy award-winning War Game, a 25min TV Special for Illuminated Films/C4), Family Ties - Dreams & Desires, a multi-award-winning short film by Joanna Quinn for Beryl Productions/S4C, A Small Miracle, a 25 minute TV special for Grasshopper Productions/ITV, and The Canterbury Tales – The Squire’s Tale for S4C. Morgan’s kid’s TV series’ credits include Monkey Dust for TalkBack/BBC3, The Cramp Twins for TV Loonland/CBBC, Harry & His Bucketful of Dinosaurs for Collingwood O’Hare/Cartoon Network/Playhouse Disney, Horrid Henry for Novel/CITV, and Grizzly Tales for Honeycomb/Nickelodeon. From 2010 to 2013 Morgan developed and directed both series of Spider Eye’s own show, ‘Jungle Junction’ (92 x 11 minute episodes, including 1 x 44 minute special) for Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior. More recent credits include: 2014 Co-directed ‘Moshi Monsters – the Movie’ for Mind Candy, which had a full theatrical release with Universal in over 400 Cinemas. 2015: Directed Thomas the Tank engine ‘Thomas around the world’ motion comic series (21 x 3 minute episodes) series for Mattel/Hit Entertainment for their U Tube channel 2015/2016 Animation Director on Spot Bots (26 x 14 minute episodes) for CBeebies. 2016/2017 Developed and Directed 'The Happos Family' TV series (20 x 2.5 minute episodes) for Turner/Boomerang. This was their first original show. Directed ‘Thomas & Yong Bao’ motion comic series (12 x 3 minute episodes) for Mattel/Hit Entertainment for their U Tube channel.