Bios

Dream Sequence Productions is the web site of producer/media artist Lyn Gaza and illustrator/animator Michael Manning.

Lyn Gaza

An accomplished photographer, media artist and producer, Lyn Gaza brings a synthesis of creative and organizational skills to every project. Lyn’s creative work began with photography, combining metaphoric symbols, mysterious figures, and pushed color to create dreamlike tableaus. Some of her inspirations include Clarence John Laughlin, Barbara Ess, Jan Saudek and Francesca Woodman. Her work has been published by nylon, Dwell, San Francisco Bride, DJ Times and Harper Collins, amongst others.

Inspired in part by installations created by Doug Aitken and Shirin Nishat for the Whitney Biennial in 2000, Lyn began expanding her work into the realm of video and projection. She worked professionally as an animator and colorist, contributing her vision to several short subject video and indie features, as well as television programs. Her current visual work layers photography with video and animation, creating an atmosphere of mystery and drama as seen in her earlier photographic work.

In recent years Lyn has focused on producing works for theatrical performance. As a projection designer she collaborated with Michael Manning to create visuals for Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, for which they were awarded a Garland Award by Backstage West in 2008. In partnership with the Los Angeles Opera’s Ring Festival, Highways and collision/theory they also created visuals for the well received Blood Red Lost Head Dead Falcon: The Nibelungen. Lyn is currently writing a multimedia play entitled Afterimage.

Lyn’s producing career began with coordinating large-scale commercial photography shoots. Her favorite assignments were the most challenging, requiring multiple elements such as body builders, trained dogs and the perfect sunrise in a remote desert location to come together seamlessly. After 10 years in photography, Lyn shifted to the interactive world, producing a series of web games for cartoonnetwork.com and Adult Swim. Since then she has produced projects for console games, web sites, facebook, Blu-ray, ipad, LED walls and interactive touch screens, specializing in large scale projects utilizing recent technologies.

An avid reader and cinephile, Lyn appreciates the works of Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Jennifer Egan, Lucius Shepard, Wong Kar Wai, Lisa Cholodenko, Sophia Coppola, Danny Boyle, Jim Jarmusch, Maya Deren and Orson Welles. Lyn studied Photography, Film and Performance at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She was born in New York and grew up on the East Coast in locations ranging from the edge of Lake Ontario to Southern Florida.

Michael Manning

Born in New York and raised in Massachusetts, Michael began drawing as soon as he was old enough to hold a pencil. Early exposure to Japanese animation, mythology and fairy tale book illustration as well as American and European comics contributed significantly to the formation of his style. Michael studied Film and Animation at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His interest in combining live-action film with hand-drawn animation resulted in his experimental short Up & Back receiving a regional merit award in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ 12th Annual Student Film Awards as well as an Artists Foundation Grant for Film.

Michael spent the next seven years working as an animator and director of award-winning short films, commercials, and music videos for stop-motion studio Olive Jar Animation in Boston. During this time, he also drew and self-published his own original comics, which resulted in his professional comics debut in Crow creator James O’Barr’s and musician/animator John Bergin’s Bone Saw anthology.

A move to the West Coast in 1991 coincided with Michael’s emergence as a writer and illustrator of original graphic novels and art collections for publishers such as NBM Publishing and Last Gasp. Michael’s signature graphic novel The Spider Garden has since been translated into French, German, and Italian. His adaptations of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexandre Dumas and other classic authors appeared in the Graphic Classics anthology series. Digital releases of his books are also in development.

As a freelance animator, character designer, and storyboard artist, Michael has worked for many studios, including Colossal, Curious? Pictures and Wild Brain. His illustration clients include Chronicle Books and Harper Collins. Multimedia performances have provided yet another venue for his work, in the form of animated projections, concept art, set and costume designs.

Michael’s artwork has been exhibited in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, Mexico City. Tokyo, and Milan. In 2002, mural-sized reproductions of panels from his In A Metal Web graphic novel were featured as part of a special installation at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts comics-themed exhibition Fantastic! Comics and the Art of Illusion.

Michael continues to be a great admirer of the Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite art movements as well as the classical ukiyo-e prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Unagawa Kuniyoshi, the work of modern manga artists Yukito Kishiro and Hiroaki Samura, and animators such as Hayao Miyazaki, Shinichiro Watanabe, and Kôji Morimoto.

Dream Sequence Productions

Originally started by Lyn Gaza as a venue for her multimedia work, Dream Sequence has become a showcase for the collaborative and solo work of Lyn Gaza and Michael Manning. Since meeting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the two have provided support for each others creative endeavors and worked together on many projects and exhibits. Lyn and Michael continue to work individually in their chosen fields, while looking forward to more opportunities to create media together for projection, installation and digital platforms. They reside in downtown Los Angeles with their two cats and a large collection of books and music.