Ellen Meske is a freelance director of animated movies, a storyboard artist and an illustrator.
She is well known in international stop motion animation circles for her originality, humour and technical expertise.

Ellen lives in Amsterdam on a tree-lined canal. In the last twenty years she has shared her vast experience with different studios in the Netherlands and Europe. She has also given workshops in countries as far distant as Japan. Ellen was born in Los Angeles, USA, and studied at the Los Angeles College of Design. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz (1974). In the United States, she worked mainly as a graphic artist and an illustrator. She moved to Holland in 1977.

Always interested in animation, Ellen entered the Vrije Academie Psychopolis in The Hague where she was inspired by the world-renowned independent animation artists working there at the time. She was encouraged to make her first film "The Inflatable Alphabet" by drawing on paper.

Then she worked as an animation assistant for such well-known Dutch filmmakers as Hans Nassenstein and Monique Renault.

She also began to work independently, exploring a variety of animation techniques in educational shorts, children's films and commercials for television.

Ellen was commissioned in 1988 to create an animated series about sharing house work called "House Holding". She built a one-woman animation studio, and with the success of her clay puppets was later given a grant to make a longer film, "Capriccio". Both endeavours were rewarded with prizes at international animation festivals.

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