Dana Terrace

Terrace was born in Hamden, Connecticut. She spent eight years going to Catholic school, gaining an interest in painters such as John Bauer, Remedios Varo, and Hieronymus Bosch.[2][3] As a child, she watched cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls, South Park, and The Simpsons, inspiring her later works.[4][3][5] Similarly, Hayao Miyazaki's "mature anime" film titled Princess Mononoke, Studio Ghibli films, and Garfield influenced her as well.[6][5][7] In 2000, she created her first flip-book animation, which focused on "Pikachu thundershocking a Charmander."[8] Prior to studying animation at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Terrace was a dancer for 10 years.[9] While obsessing over Pokémon as kid, she was "big into cats," with the characters she drew being cats or cat-girls "being chased by ghosts and dinosaur ghosts."[10] This continued at SVA. While there she drew for about eight hours a day, as she had during her years at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School in New Haven, Connecticut,[3] and began posting work to her Tumblr blog.[6] In April 2012, during her third year at SVA, she created an animated short titled "Kickball," which was praised for its design and "expressive motion,"[11] complete with voiceovers by Yotem Perel and music by Jeff Liu.[12][13] Her film won a grant from the National Board of Review.[14][15] The following year, she worked with Iker Maidagan on a short animated film titled Mirage.[16][17] Maidagan did the layout and wrote the story, while Terrace animated and design the characters. The film was praised as being "flawlessly executed,"[16] was shown at the LA Shorts Fest,[18] and resulted in Terrace and Maidagan receiving an Alumni Scholarship Award.[19] At the time, when asked about animating, she said she loved it, and said she is on the track to become a "proper filmmaker"[20] and stated that she would collaborate with Maidagan in the future.[21] She later described her experience at SVA as a mixed bag, although she stated she learned a lot from online tutorials, her peers, and fellow students.[10]

After graduating from SVA in 2013, she interned the following summer at JibJab,[22] where she met an individual from Gravity Falls who saw her student film Mirage and sent her a storyboard test, subsequently landing her a job on the series as a storyboard revisionist.[23][24][2] As she described it in 2017, she was brought into Gravity Falls because creative people working on the show liked what they saw on her Tumblr blog, and she was brought in because she was willing to do any kind of animation for a specific scene.[6] Her work for Gravity Falls would be her "first professional animation job," where she learned to storyboard, how to handle a crew, and have a clear vision.[25] In 2019, she said she had a "wonderful experience" on Gravity Falls and said she "couldn’t have asked for a better first gig."[5] However, she admitted in a 2016 interview that she was waiting to hear back from Steven Universe because she was a fan of Rebecca Sugar after seeing her films at SVA, but they "took too long to reply" so she decided to work for Gravity Falls instead.[10]

In 2014, she tabled at the CTN Animation Expo with Nate Swineheart, and sold prints, sketchbooks, and other works.[26] In later years, she drew illustrations of characters such as Hermione Granger, a protagonist in the Harry Potter series.[27] In 2018, she inked 34 pages of Hirsch's graphic novel, Gravity Falls: Lost Legends: 4 All-New Adventures![28][29][30]

In 2017, Terrace directed various episodes of DuckTales and made the character Webby Vanderquack "more dynamic."[24][4][31] Terrace later described this job as a place she wasn't feeling "fulfilled artistically or emotionally," which moved her to create her own series.[2] Although she had never watched the series before working on the show, the line producer for the second season of Gravity Falls was also working on DuckTales and brought her into the show.[10] The same year, Variety highlighted her as an up-and-coming animator, saying that she is learning more all the time and is always "looking for the next way to push herself."[6] Also that year she worked as a storyboard revisionist for Tangled: Before Ever After,[32] a film directed by Tom Caulfield and Stephen Sandoval, the latter who would later work on The Owl House.[33] Additionally, she would storyboard the fourth episode of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, "Challenge of the Brave."[34]

After years of working on other Disney Channel shows, Terrace began to pitch her own series, coming up with the characters and "baseline idea" for the show at the end of 2016.[35] Her pitch, which came only a few months after she started directing DuckTales in 2017,[36] "a young girl [who] goes to another world and learns magic from an older witch",[37] later developed into The Owl House.[38] The first character she created was the Owl Lady, which she based on the women in her family,[36] including her aunts, mother, and grandmother. The character Luz Noceda is named after her roommate.[39] The series was also influenced by Pokemon Red, a game Terrace’s father, Thomas Terrace, an attorney in Hamden, Connecticut, gave her before he died when she was age 11.[2][3] Terrace said she was motivated to create The Owl House to prove it was a good story, and gave it the current name because of the "mystique surrounding owls."[40][3] She later said that while there is some information for fans who want to "dig deeper" into the show, like codes and ciphers in Gravity Falls, there is a way to "enjoy the show as it is" without digging into the show's lore.[25]

The Owl House began development on February 23, 2018 when it was greenlit alongside Amphibia, and premiered on January 10, 2020 on Disney Channel in the United States.[41][42] The series was approved for a second season on November 21, 2019.[40][43] The same year, Terrace illustrated an alternative cover for issue 4 of Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake: Card Wars, a BOOM! Studios six-issue miniseries which featured Fionna and Cake, the gender-swapped versions of Finn and Jake.[44] Terrace also provided guest animation for the episode of Adventure Time titled "Bad Timing".[45][46] A few years later, Terrace criticized the cancellation of The Venture Bros. by Adult Swim, writing "this timeline sucks."[47]

Terrace came out as bisexual in 2017,[53] and drew on her experiences to create The Owl House and the bisexual character Luz Noceda.[50] Terrace has mentioned multiple times that she draws inspiration for Luz Noceda from herself.[9] She currently uses she/her pronouns.[54]

As of 2015, Terrace is dating Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch.[55] Terrace and Hirsch have participated in numerous charity live streams together, in which they draw cartoons to raise money for various organizations including Planned Parenthood,[56][57] The American Civil Liberties Union,[58][59][60] The Southern Poverty Law Center,[60] The Natural Resources Defense Council (with Ninja Sex Party and Arin Hanson),[61][62][63] Direct Relief (with Justin Roiland and Ethan Klein),[64][65][66][67] The Trevor Project (with Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey),[68][69] and RAICES.[70][71][72] All together totaling over $270,000 raised.[60]

Terrace also signed a petition for pay equity in the animation industry, as did other fellow creators like Rebecca Sugar, Justin Roiland, Lauren Faust, Ian Jones-Quartey, Owen Dennis, and Matt Braly.[73]

• Dana Terrace at IMDb
• Dana Terrace on Twitter
• Dana Terrace on Instagram
• Dana Terrace on Tumblr