Erik Aadahl, James Baxter - Kung Fu Panda

Sound designer ERIK AADAHL (Sound Effects) hails from the San Francisco Bay area, and attended USC’s Cinema-Television School as a film production major.

Aadahl served as sound effects editor on a string of action films, including “Daredevil,” “X2,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” “Elektra,” “Fantastic Four” and “The New World.” He also worked as sound designer on “I, Robot” and “Hide and Seek.” Most recently, he sound designed the international blockbusters “Superman Returns” and “Transformers.”

Erik has been nominated for four Emmys and has won two Golden Reel awards.
“Kung Fu Panda” marks Aadahl’s animation sound editing debut.


JAMES BAXTER (2D Animation) was born in Bristol, England in May, 1967, and he and his family moved to Bishop’s Stortford six months later. He started experimenting on little animation tests with a 8mm camera at age 16.

After a one-year art foundation course at Cambridge College of Arts & Technology, James attended the West Surrey College of Arts & Design. He studied animation for one year before leaving to work on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” with Richard Williams in London. James started as an in-betweener and finished as an animator.

In 1988, James moved to Burbank, California, to work at the Walt Disney Company. There he worked on “The Little Mermaid,” “Rescuers Down Under” and “Beauty and the Beast,” as well as the short, “Tummy Trouble.” James took a two-year break to work in London at Passion Pictures and in San Francisco at Colossal Pictures, working on commercials for both. In 1992, James returned to the Walt Disney Company and served as a supervising animator on “The Lion King” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

James made the move to DreamWorks SKG in 1996 and animated and supervised animation on six feature films, including “Prince of Egypt,” “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and “Shrek 2.”

Since the beginning of 2005, James has been running his own studio, James Baxter Animation, in Pasadena, California. James Baxter Animation has produced several projects, including the hand drawn animation for the feature film “Enchanted” in 2007.

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