Ryan Olson

Lead Animator, Crowds

Brought back in a lead capacity to own the crowd pipeline on an unannounced Netflix series. Building end-to-end delivery workflow from the ground up, improving proprietary tools, and establishing scalable systems for high-volume production. Directly managing a team of animators with full responsibility for scope, scheduling, and quality standards.

Animation Supervisor / Director

On Star Trek: Scouts, directed character performance across in-house and overseas teams. Set performance standards early, tightened cross-studio communication, and drove down late-stage revisions while protecting the tone of the Star Trek universe.

On Barney's World Season 2, served as Animation Director leading a 12-person in-house team alongside overseas collaboration. Pushed expression and acting clarity for a preschool audience, stayed hands-on in dailies, and delivered the season on schedule.

Lead Animator

Led all crowd animation and development work on WondLa (Apple TV+ / Skydance Animation) across three full seasons. Scoped, scheduled, and supervised crowd builds reaching 500 characters per shot, and directed retakes on the first three episodes to align the work with the creative vision. Collaborated across Shot Finaling, Lighting, and Compositing to deliver under fast-paced conditions.

Following WondLa, joined a Netflix feature-quality series in pre-production as Lead Development Animator, building character cycles and proof-of-concept animation for an exaggerated, cartoony style.

Director / Animation Director / Supervisor

Hotel Transylvania (Season 2) — Elevated the animation quality to a level that drew direct commendation from Sony executives. The result was a promotion to Animation Director.

Pete the Cat (Season 2) — Directed animation across a song-based episodic series, sharpening storytelling and character depth through detailed scene notation.

Sweet Tweets (Season 2) — Series Director leading a 13-person team of designers, storyboard artists, animators, and editorial. Delivered under budget in collaboration with the producer and show creator.

Alpha Betas (2022) — Animation Director on a series that reached 8 million views on YouTube.

Also: Skookum & Chums (Director, pilot), DNAce, Mysticons, Ready Jet Go, Summer Memories

Manager, Illustration & Animation / Lead Animator

Joined Disney Interactive as a Flash Illustrator/Animator and built the art department from 9 artists to a team of 28, with 4 art leads, over nine years. As Manager of Illustration and Animation, led that team in delivering weekly 2D and 3D content to an audience of 200 million active players on Disney Club Penguin, at the time the number one virtual world for kids.

Served as the point person for art across the Kelowna and Glendale, CA studios. Led the art team through creative partnerships with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Oversaw a full rebrand of Club Penguin's characters and environments, drove art guideline development, and set up a training program to bring the team up to speed on mobile production. Earlier, created the animation and personality for the Yellow Puffle character and contributed animation and game design to Aqua Grabber, Card Jitsu, Dance Contest, and others.

Animator / Render Wrangler

3D character animation on Storm Hawks and animation on the League of Super Evil promo. Began as a Render Wrangler, helped establish new render pipeline processes for Storm Hawks, and became efficient enough to run episodes solo before transitioning into animation.