Jason Alexander Heist
While growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jason Heist was influenced by his surroundings. Both his parents were artists and graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. His father later became a Graphic Designer at Autodesk, while his mother became a Sculptor and became a manager of a local art studio. Jason would go to the art shows at a very young age, and watch old Sci-Fi Creature & Fantasy films with with his family at home. Some of his major influences growing up were Ray Harryhausen, Jim Henson, and Art Clokey.
Jason, later became interested in film and would go to his local video store so much, that the employees would exchange their on personal DVDs with him and eventually gave him a job at the age of 15. There he became obsessed with independent and foreign films, and would watch the library of movies that the video store had to offer and would recommend to customers on a daily basis.
Jason studied Cinema at San Francisco State University, and later graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Animation & Visual Effects at Ex'pression College in Emeryville, CA. He has worked on independent and feature films as well as short animation projects.