Animation Collaborations

One of the most fun parts of my job as Senior Video Editor at Cascade PBS is creating animated storytelling sequences with our history series Mossback’s Northwest, a strategy we first started using in the fall of 2021.

When beginning to produce season 5, we realized that two of the stories we were planning to feature included story elements that had very few historical assets: one was about mythological sea serpents of the Salish Sea and the other was about famous dogs of the Pacific Northwest.

I happened to have a background in comic book producing so I dug into my virtual Rolodex and reached out to Levi Hastings, a gifted, Seattle-based illustrator who has a deep affection for animals - especially sea creatures like whales and aquatic dinosaurs. It was a natural fit.

These first two animated episodes were among our favorite that season and, since then, we have featured at least one animation-assisted episode each season. Both of our Emmy-winning episodes have featured original artwork done by another of our favorite collaborators, Alegra Figeroid.

I’ve also enjoyed using the different animation sections to challenge my directorial and animation skills. The most recent examples from season 10 are my most ambitious to date.

Below you’ll find every episode of Mossback’s Northwest I edited that features an illustrator collaboration starting with the most recent.