ABOUT Craig Miller
Craig Miller is a well-known and respected authority on writing for both animation and games who has become a popular speaker on those subjects throughout much of the world. Not someone who just talks about the subject, Miller is active as a writer with over 150 credits.
He has spoken on creating characters, crafting stories, writing dialog, and developing programming for animation or games at such international events as the Annecy (France) Animation Festival; Cartoons on the Bay/The International Conference on Television Animation in Positano, Italy; and the Interactive Entertainment Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, as well as for the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE); KidScreen Summit; the World Animation Celebration; Anime L.A.; Animation Expo; the San Diego Comic Con; the World Science Fiction Convention; and many other events. He's lectured at UCLA and Columbia College and taught a regular class on those topics for the Art Institute of California. He now also teaches at Woodbury University.
Miller received degrees in Child Development and Social Psychology before becoming involved with the entertainment industry. For the next several years, he worked as a consultant on feature film publicity, marketing, and licensing for Warner Bros., Universal, Disney, Columbia, Henson Associates, Lucasfilm, and others. His work included the films Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Excalibur, Superman II, Altered States, The Dark Crystal, The Wicker Man, and many more.
But for most of his career, he has been writing, developing, and producing for television and films and acting as a consultant to the game industry. His career includes working directly with such people as George Lucas and Jim Henson and on every kind of project from a syndicated magic special to Sesame Street. This has provided him with broad-based experience including industrial films, movie trailers, stage productions, animation that ranges from The Smurfs to Godzilla, and live-action series such as Showtime's erotic horror series The Hunger.
The majority of his work has been for the children's and young adult market. His 104 episode TV series, Pocket Dragon Adventures, was a finalist for the Humanitas Prize and has seen seven days a week on the BBC and in dozens of countries around the world. His writing has run the gamut from action-adventure shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers: Beast Wars to comedy-adventure series like The Real Ghostbusters to softer shows such as The Smurfs. Most recently, he’s worked on Trollz (CBS) and Curious George (PBS). His work is in demand internationally as well. Recently, for CCTV, the official Chinese television network, he co-developed and wrote episodes of the animated series Flute Master (soon to be released on DVD in the US). He’s developed two animated series for Australian production companies and is currently developing a live-action science fiction adventure series for an international production company.
He was one of the creators and an active participant in the Writers Guild of America's Literacy Project, putting professional writers into public schools to work with teachers and their classes on a recurring basis, to encourage reading and writing. He consulted with the Washington D.C. Implementation Group on developing the rating system for children's television in the United States and was the sole scriptwriter invited to take part in a multi-day seminar of academics, researchers, and top network & studio executives gathered to develop guidelines for creating television programming for children. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of Canada, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (where he has been an Emmy Judge for the last several years). He also serves on the Steering Committee for Women In Animation - Los Angeles.