Peter Chanthanakone is an award winning director and producer specializing in 3D animated short films. He won numerous film festival awards and his works has been selected in major film festivals around the world such as Germany, France, Austria, Canada, China, Belgium, Brazil, Portugal, UK, Slovakia, Moldova, Cuba, Switzerland, Spain, Thailand, Laos, S. Korea, Czech Republic, Croatia, Ukraine, South Africa, Hungary, Greece, Pakistan, India, Australia, Taiwan, Jamaica, Italy as a retrospective at the 2013 VIEW Animation Video Festival and on a giant screen in Times Square in the NYC International Film Festival. Cumulatively, his work has been selected in over 65 international juried competitions. He is also a jury member for the prestigious Electronic Theatre for Siggraph Asia and director and producer at RiFF Animation Studio in Bangkok, Thailand.

Peter is a perennial international speaker, with talks at Siggraph Asia, Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival, Asia Animation Forum, the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Dubai (2014), Hong Kong (2016), Manizales (2017) and Durban (2018), Society of Animation Studies in Toronto (2014), London (2015), Singapore (2016) and Venice (2017) and visiting artist talks at the world’s top animation school, Sheridan College, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, at the University of Sao Paulo, Chulalongkorn University, Rangsit University, Silapakorn and Mahidol University in Bangkok and biennial workshops at the Vientianale Film Festival and National University of Laos.

Peter is currently an Associate Professor in Animation and Design at Zayed University in Dubai, UAE and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Iowa and has also taught at Brock University (Canada), Grand Canyon University (Phoenix), Stanford, Villanova and his research involves animation production and accelerating the animation pipeline for independent short films.

He was born in Niagara Falls, Canada and obtained his BFA at McMaster University (Canada) in Fine Art/Multimedia and completed his MFA at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in Animation.

In his spare time, he operates RizingZun Animation, an award winning animation studio.