Behind the Scenes of Netflix's "That Christmas" with Director Simon Otto and VFX Supervisor Doug Ikeler

Simon Otto makes his feature directorial debut on That Christmas. He previously directed the Love, Death and Robots episode from Season 2 ‘The Tall Grass’, and developed, executive produced and served as the Supervising Director on the successful Netflix series A Tale Dark & Grimm. He also directed episodes on the Netflix animated series Dragons: Race to the Edge and Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia. Otto spent over 20 years working at DreamWorks Animation, most notably as the Head of Character Animation on the Oscar®-nominated How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. In that role, Simon oversaw the character animation and was instrumental in designing and developing the look of the characters, their personalities, and the overall style of the animation, while also working in the story department as a story artist. He first joined DreamWorks in 1997 to work on the groundbreaking The Prince of Egypt and worked as a Supervising Animator both in hand-drawn and CG animation on many of the studio’s features including, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and the Aardman co-production Flushed Away. Born and raised in Switzerland, Simon studied animation at the prestigious Les Gobelins Animation School in Paris, France.

Doug is the CTO and SVP of Digital Production at Locksmith Animation. He is an animation industry veteran with 35 years' experience. Starting as a digital artist on traditionally cel animated films, Doug moved through a career as a Modeller, Effects Artist, and a CG Generalist to become a Visual Effects Supervisor on several CG features. That career included Dreamworks, Sony, Aardman, Rhythm and Hues and Disney. Utilizing an even blend of technical and creative for “Making Pictures” continues to be the passion that drives him. Credits Include: (in release order) We’re Back: a Dinosaur’s tale, Balto, Coca Cola Polar Bears campaign, Waterworld, Babe, Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit, Sinbad, Shrek, The Haunted Mansion, The Matrix 2, Open Season, Arthur Christmas, Ron’s Gone Wrong. Whilst at DreamWorks Animation’s during its inception, Doug was part of the first digital artists to start using CG in traditionally animated features like “Prince of Egypt”. He played a key role in establishing the digital animation process at Sony Pictures while working as the VFX Supervisor on the first animated film “Open Season”. Similarly at Disney he oversaw converting the digital process of the direct-to-video unit called Disney Toons into a Vendor based model for theatrical release. Joining Locksmith Animation in 2018 and after completing the first feature “Ron’s Gone Wrong, Doug is working to emphasize the pre-production unit’s process to use cutting edge digital tools to establish the look and feel of a movie before it goes into production. Providing techniques and ways of working for filmmakers to get to their goals quicker, smarter and cost effectively, is his mission statement.