Biography
Paul Harrod has worked for over three decades as a production designer, art director and director of both animated and live action projects, with a special emphasis on stop-motion animation.
In his capacity as a designer, model maker and sculptor, he lent his skills to such diverse projects as sculpting aliens for Star Trek V and designing and building miniature sets for the opening titles of Pee Wee's Playhouse. Specializing in miniature sets for visual effects and stop-motion projects, he set the tone for a variety of commercial campaigns, including the first several Chevron "Talking Cars" spots at Aardman Animations in 1994, a campaign which continues to this day.
Harrod moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon in the early 90's taking on the mantle of Senior Art Director at Will Vinton Studios, overseeing the design demands of all studio output. He served as production designer and director of five episodes over the three season run of the Fox TV series, "The PJs" for which he was nominated for an Annie award in 2000. He also directed the first episode of UPN's, "Gary and Mike" animated series and the pilot demo for Warner Brother's,"Slacker Cats", both for Will Vinton Studios.
Joining the directing team at Bent Image Lab in 2003 his animated commercials for Tractor Supply Company (TSC) received awards and attention for their outstanding creative design and dry, understated humor. TSC's "Koi Pond", was voted one of the 50 best spots of 2006 by Adweek. He has directed numerous commercials for clients including Kellogg's Twistables, Quaker, Chips Ahoy!, Hallmark, Ensure, Cartoon Network, Lowes and Aflac.
In 2010 he was designer and Art Director for a stop-motion sequence in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas for HouseSpecial, directed by Academy Award winner, Mark Gustafson.
From September of 2015 through August of 2017 He was brought on as co-Production Designer with Adam Stockhausen on Wes Anderson's stop-motion feature, Isle Of Dogs. The film is was released on March 23, 2018. Stockhausen and Harrod were awarded the Art Directors Guild award for Excellence in Production Design for an Animated Feature in 2019.
In 2019 he joined Henry Selick's stop-motion feature Wendell And Wild as Production Designer. The film was released on Netflix in October of 2022. Following that project he served as Production Designer on the Apple TV+ series, Shape Island, based on the Shape Trilogy books by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen.
