| Duke Johnson | |
| Birth Date: | 20 March 1979 |
| Birth Place: | St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Director, Writer, Producer |
| Alma Mater: | New York University, AFI Conservatory |
| Years Active: | 2000–present |
| Spouse: | Soyoung Na |
Duke Johnson is an American film director who specializes in stop-motion animation.[1] He currently serves as a director and junior partner for Dino Stamatopoulos's animation production studio Starburns Industries in Burbank, California.[2] [3]
Johnson was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended St. John Vianney High School. Between his second and third years at St John Vianney, he attended a summer film course at Columbia College Chicago.[4] [5] He graduated from the film school at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where he spent a semester studying animation in Prague.[6] After graduating, he spent three years working as a waiter in a New York restaurant before moving to Los Angeles, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree in directing from the AFI Conservatory in 2006.[7] At AFI, he directed his student film Marrying God, for which he won 8 awards for best student film or best short film.
Johnson has been nominated for Annie Awards in 2011 and 2012 for directing stop-motion episodes of shows such as Mary Shelley's Frankenhole and Community.[8]
In 2016, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in the 88th Academy Awards for co-directing the stop-motion comedy-drama film Anomalisa with Charlie Kaufman.[9] [10]
Johnson made his solo directing debut with the upcoming film The Actor, based on the 2010 novel Memory by Donald E. Westlake.[11]
| 2006 | Marrying God | |||
| 2017 | Moonwrapped |
| 2015 | Anomalisa | Co-directed with Charlie Kaufman | ||||
| The Actor | Post-production |
| 2008 | Moral Orel | Episode "Help" | ||||
| 2010 | Community | Episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" | ||||
| 2010–2012 | Mary Shelley's Frankenhole | Also matte painter | ||||
| 2012 | Beforel Orel: Trust | TV special; also animator | ||||
| 2020 | Supervising animation director Episode "Vavilov" |
| 2003 | Just an American Boy | Cinematographer | Documentary film | |
| 2020 | I'm Thinking of Ending Things | Producer of animation |