Dice & Robert is a short featurette examining the influence of Tyrus Wong on animation artists, Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo, co-directors of the Oscar-nominated short film, The Dam Keeper, and founders of the Berkeley-based animation studio, Tonko House. The film premiered with TYRUS on PBS’s American Masters.

Backstory

The idea for Dice & Robert was borne out of the need to fill the approximately 10-minute gap between TYRUS’s 78-minute running time and PBS’s 90-min broadcast slot.

Feature animation producer, Jinko Gotoh, suggested I profile animation artists Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo.  Both were deeply influenced by the work of Tyrus Wong and both were of Asian descent. I loved the idea of profiling this young generation of animators and hearing them talk about Tyrus’s influence and how his Asian heritage inspired them as young animators. My San Francisco crew, Susan Bradley and Jim Choi, and I filmed them at Tonko House, the animation studio they founded in 2014, after leaving Pixar Studios.