Dino Athanassiou (born 21 May 1962) is a British animation director, designer, concept artist, and storyboarder in the classic Hollywood tradition of character performance, both traditionally drawn and computer-animated. Dino Athanassiou was the animation director and character adaptor for the twelfth series of Thomas & Friends. He worked in conjunction with Nitrogen Studios and HiT Entertainment.
He first worked in conjunction with Nitrogen Studios for CGI tests of Thomas and the Stinky Cheese and Don't Be Silly, Billy as the animation director.
He was originally asked to consult with executives at HiT Entertainment to see if it was possible to add CGI elements to the models. Following this he was asked to supervise two pilots for the new style which convinced the HiT executives to ask him direct the animation for hybrid look and redesign the human characters as well. He also recommended Nitrogen Studios to HiT to animate the series in full CGI, as he had worked with them before.
Athanassiou owns the animation service known as Stardust Pictures, and has worked with many studios such as DreamWorks, Walt Disney Studios and Arc Productions.
Gallery
CGI Testing
In 2008, Thomas and the Stinky Cheese was used for a CGI testing[1][2] by Dino's company, Stardust Pictures before the series switched over to Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) animation. A few of these re-created clips can also be seen in a 2009 CGI promo featured on certain DVDs.
Storyboards
Screencaptures
Storyboards
Storyboards for the episode Don't be Silly, Billy were also created for CGI testing purposes.[3]