Melissa Johnson

Melissa Johnson is a production and development executive in the field of animation. She is also an accomplished writer and producer working in the New York and Los Angeles areas. Melissa served as the New York Head of Production for Buck Design, a design and animation studio specializing in commercials. Prior to joining Buck, Melissa developed and produced television for clients such as The Colbert Report, The Disney Channel, Playhouse Disney, PBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, Vh-1, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, A&E, Oxygen Media, BET, and Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse/Saturday Night Live. Melissa specializes in content and character development as well as animation production whether it's 3D, stop-motion, hybrids of live action and animation, or traditional cel. In her over 15 years in the industry, she has worked in commercials, corporate branding and identity, visual effects, videogames, feature films and episodic television series. Prior to Buck, Melissa served as the Executive in Charge of Development and Production at Perspective Studios, a 3D and motion capture studio responsible for the Grand Theft Auto and Rock Band video games. While there, she developed six intellectual properties in conjunction with Virgin Comics, each with a video game, a graphic novel, and a feature film component with writers such as graphic novelist, Grant Morrison. She helped take Perspective from a motion capture studio to a company dedicated to developing original IP. While at Perspective, Melissa also produced the 2D animation for the EA video game release, Dante's Inferno. She also worked in both the development and production divisions of Curious Pictures, the largest episodic series animation studio in New York City. While there, she worked on the visual development and pre-production for the documentary Chicago 10 which premiered at the Sundance film festival and developed the original downloadable video game Out of Your Mind. Melissa also worked on the Disney Channel tween series Katbot while at flash studio Funny Garbage. She has also worked for graphic design and branding company Ca-Square and the NYC editorial and visual effects studio Spontaneous/Bluerock. Melissa also worked as a producer for Oxygen Media's animation development lab, X-Chromosome, which produced twelve animated series in two years with studios such as Wild Brain. While at Oxygen, Melissa developed web strategy and branded entertainment to generate ad sales for the network, increasing online traffic by 500%. She also wrote and directed a short film, Lovesick in Queens which aired in X-Chromosome. Melissa also served as Supervising Producer of Development and Acting Head of Production for the flash and aftereffects studio Flickerlab in New York. While at Flickerlab, she oversaw both development and production. She specialized in the teen and adult markets. She helped develop an ad campaign for the American Heart Association focused around two original animated characters. She also developed a strategy to build a commercial division for the studio and actively recruited some of the top directors in the live action, animation, and puppetry fields. Melissa's animated shorts have won international awards and have shown in San Francisco, Ottawa, New York, Annecy and LA festivals and she has served as both a judge and keynote speaker at industry conferences and festivals. In addition to her work in television, Melissa has also written and/or produced commercial and branding/print campaigns for Bravo, Oxygen Media, A&E, Volkswagon, Columbia Artists, The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, The Berlin Philharmonic, and the City University of New York among others. In 2006 Melissa formed her own creative development company, Dainty Creative, with partner Laura Herbert and has worked on campaigns for Bravo and Oxygen Media and launched the branding for Las Vegas's now infamous Burlesque Hall of Fame museum among others. Melissa received her BA in Theatre/Film Studies and Creative Writing from Oberlin College and completed coursework towards her MA/Ph.D. in Theatre at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. She served as Managing Editor of the academic journal Slavic and East European Performance and the World Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, Eastern Europe. Melissa was a Bonner Scholar and a National Endowment for the Humanities recipient. She lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles with her husband, puppeteer and director Tim Lagasse, and a small cat circus.