Mike began his drawing and animation studies with Glenn Vilppu and other Disney artists in the early 1980’s at a small animation school called Brandes Art Institute, located in Reseda, California.

His career in feature animation began at Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1994, where he worked on six features including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Fantasia 2000, Tarzan, and Beauty and the Beast: Encore Edition. During his time at Disney Feature Animation Mike continued his drawing and animation studies, in classes held at the studio with artists Glenn Vilppu, Steve Huston, and Walt Stanchfield.

After leaving Disney Feature Animation Mike’s animation production experience included work on three films for Walt Disney Animation Australia, as a director of assistant animation on the feature film ‘El Cid’, in Barcelona, Spain, and as an animator on television commercials for Spanish TV. Later production work included consulting on a AAA video game for Eidos Interactive and creating 3D animation for interactive amusement park attractions for Triotech, and most recently as an animation supervisor for the wildly popular Netflix animated series ‘F Is For Family’.

Mike’s teaching career began while still working at the Disney studio in Los Angeles, teaching assistant animation at the American Animation Institute in North Hollywood.

Since then he has taught in Los Angeles for The Art Institute of California, Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, and has also guest lectured at The Getty Center and Getty Villa.

From 2007 to 2011 Mike lived in Florence, Italy where he taught traditional animation at the Accademia Nemo, and also figure drawing privately to small groups of travellers, as well as local Florence art students looking to complement their formal studies. Mike lived in Montréal Canada from 2012 until 2023, and worked as a software trainer for Toonboom Animation, teaching the use of Harmony animation software in educational and production settings.

Mike currently lives with his wife and daughter in Florence, Italy where he continues his online animation teaching for internationally renowned schools Syn Studio and CG Master Academy, and has re-started is teaching of private sketching workshops in the piazzas of Florence’s historic city center.