John A. Davis

As a child, John A. Davis would animate using his family's 8mm camera to film action figures and animate them using stop-motion techniques. Convinced that animation was what he wanted to do with his life, the Dallas, Texas native attended Southern Methodist University, a private university in his home city. In college he threw himself into his studies, and worked on "The Bermuda Triangle," a stop motion film he completed in 1981. Davis graduated in 1984 and took a job as an animator for K&H Studios, a studio that eventually went bankrupt. He directed the television movie "Santa vs. The Snowman" in 1997, and was the Animation Director on another holiday-themed project, "Olive, the Other Reindeer." Around the same period of time he wrote a script called "Runaway Rocketboy" which he initially abandoned but would later rework into the script that would become the feature film "Jimmy Neutron." The success of "Jimmy Neutron" allowed Davis to develop the show for television and the series was a tremendous success, running from 2002 to 2006. After being approached by Tom Hanks about directing a project, Davis directed "The Ant Bully" in 2006, the project was successful, and Davis went on to develop "Planet Sheen," a spinoff of "Jimmy Neutron," which was picked up by Nickelodeon.