The Short Version:
My name is Jason Porath. In a past life, I used to work on animated movies such as How to Train Your Dragon 2, The Croods, and Kung Fu Panda 2. Upon leaving the animation industry, I started Rejected Princesses: a blog celebrating women of history and myth who were too awesome, awful, or offbeat for the animated princess treatment. It went viral, there’s a book, and the rest is history.
I live in Los Angeles, enjoy exploring abandoned buildings, and sing a lot of karaoke.
I’m currently unrepresented by any agents or managers.
The Long Version:
While working at DreamWorks Animation, I had quite a few opinions about the state of animated movies. I’d often joke around with co-workers about movies, and one conversation we had was about “what is the least likely woman to ever get the animated princess treatment?” Some of them were such good ideas I just had to see them illustrated, so I did some illustrations (despite having little to no artistic background). As soon as I put them online, they went viral, and it became my full-time job.
I’m kind of an unlikely candidate to make an illustration blog about feminist, historical, multicultural butt-kicking ladies:
- I’m a straight white dude from Kentucky.
- I’m not a historian, or a trained artist. My degree is in film theory. I took like one art class in all of college.
- The animation I did was basically physics programming. No drawing involved. You can see what I’m talking about here.
But I’m doing it anyway. Really, I just think this stuff is neat. I try hard to get things right and to make it worth your while to come here. I’m learning as I go. Mostly, I just try to not screw up as much this week as last week.
Other interesting stuff about me:
- I gave a TEDx talk on the normalization of the fantastic.
- I’m an expert in the usage of visual effects to erase genitalia.
- I helped out with a pretty awesome music video from OK Go that you might have seen.
- I was one of the guys who made this huge musical tesla coil.
- I used to live in Japan and speak pretty decent Japanese (or at least I used to be able to).
- I have seven brothers. No sisters. My mother is a saint.
When I’m not doing this (which at this point is pretty much never – I work like 80 hours a week on it), I spend my time making dangerous art projects like musical tesla coils. I have short thumbs, soft hair, and a weird sense of humor. And I love you.