Rising Stars: Meet Ellen Su of Burbank

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ellen Su.

Hi Ellen, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve been in the animation industry for over 10 years and have done a lot of different things. It started with an internship at Pixar, then a year or two after graduation from SVA’s 3D Animation program, I became a director for animated commercials for companies like the NBA and Nickelodeon. While I was directing, I also taught at the School of Visual Arts and fostered award-winning student films. After 5 years, I felt burnt out and pivoted into a recruiting role at Titmouse. A year later I was promoted to be their Head of Artistic Recruiting. Throughout my career, I’ve volunteered for nonprofits where I mentored other artists, developed scholarships and accelerator programs. While I’ve worked on both Western 2D and 3D projects, my heart was always with anime. When I hit my early 30s, I knew I had a limited amount of time to have children and anime was finally becoming mainstream so I wanted to take a chance on myself before starting a family.

I’ve always wanted to make a difference with media because that was my escape as a kid from a broken home, left alone while my single mom worked 7 days a week as a waitress. My role models were characters in books and TV shows, just like in the series “Kotaro Lives Alone”. As a first generation immigrant child, my relationship with my mom has always been rocky, but in recent years it has improved greatly thanks to the amazing people in my life that have taught me different ways of communication and more importantly, my mom’s willingness to learn despite her saying she can’t change. Over a period of 10 years, we’ve been able to become more open with our feelings and better at identifying what’s bothering us when we start to fight.

For example, my mom and I have had this recurring fight for over 20 years that we only just figured out how to stop having. It usually starts with her going on a rant about how terrible my dad is, and as much as I love him, I knew he wasn’t the best husband. However, I’d get frustrated with having to listen to the same rant over and over again, and felt like she wasn’t listening to me when I asked her to stop. Finally, my mom felt safe enough to voice her own fear, which turned out to be an incorrect assumption. She felt like I blamed her for the divorce, so she was stuck in a loop of trying to convince me how terrible a husband he was. That helped me identify why I got mad every time she’d start this conversation. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her, it was because she’d started each rant with, “You don’t even know. I protected you from this information.” Which was very much wrong since I’ve been listening to the same rant since I was like 5 years old.

Now that those incorrect assumptions were out in the air we could finally make each other feel heard. I was able to validate her so she could stop trying to convince me of something I already knew. The next time she started the rant, she was able to stop herself and instead of telling me “You don’t even know,” (when I did) she instead said, “I don’t know if you know this already. Did I ever tell you about…?” The slight change in wording made all the difference and I didn’t immediately get angry. We were finally able to move past it.

Not everyone will have the opportunities I’ve had to mingle with families from different cultures or have access to therapy. Now more than ever, I think a lot of people feel isolated and don’t know how to handle disagreements. What if I could make an anime series that was not only fun and action-packed, but show viewers different ways to improve their relationships with the people they love?

So I set out to do just that. After 5 years of developing an original IP in my free time, I quit my 6 figure salary job at Titmouse and started working on it full time. At the moment, we’re in the process of creating a proof of concept trailer and will launch a crowd funding campaign in early 2026!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Over 20 years ago, I first fell in love with animation when I watched Sailor Moon on Toonami and I just started drawing those characters everyday. Like many of my peers, I’ve always wanted to work on anime but unfortunately, all the teachers at the time looked down on medium, told us there wouldn’t be any jobs in that style. Fast forward 20+ years, anime is now all the rage, but I don’t know if Hollywood truly understands why people of all ages are drawn to this style of storytelling.

For me, anime was willing to explore darker themes that American cartoons shied away from because in Japan, animation was not strictly for kids. Shows like Full Metal Alchemist were hilarious but also really dark. Plenty of children all over the world are forced to grow up faster than they should because of circumstances out of their control. It doesn’t help them to say “you’re too young to learn about this” and keep them in the dark. So many decisions adults make in the name of protecting kids without providing any context of WHY can cause more damage than good. Misfortune will always be a fact of life. I don’t know anyone that’s lived a life without any struggle. Instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, I want more content that shows us how to deal with it together. And if there isn’t a happy ending, how can we deal with that grief?

Going into this indie venture, I thought since I’d been a commercial director before, directing a 90 second trailer would be a breeze, but when it’s a personal project the stakes are different. I wasn’t prepared for how mentally taxing becoming an independent director is. Once you’re out of a traditional work structure, the usual avenues of validation, of knowing whether you’re doing good or not are completely gone. So I’m just out here alone, wondering if what I’m doing is any good. The final product, all the decisions made, they’re all me. If I screw up, I don’t have a client to blame for their poor taste. I’D be the one with poor taste! Additionally leaving a stable income (IN THIS ECONOMY?!) to invest in something that might not work out is terrifying.

People have asked me how I’m able to do what I’m doing, but it’s not like I just decided one day to quit my job to chase my dreams. I’ve been working and saving up for a decade. When I was directing commercials, I wanted to be making content that meant something to me, but I was too burnt out from my day job to have any creative energy for personal projects. So I left that position and pivoted into a recruiting role. That allowed me to have the creative energy to develop my project while learning about the episodic animation industry. Eventually I needed to be a producer, but recruiting was then using all my producer energy, so I had to change my circumstances again. But before I quit, I made sure I had enough savings to sustain me for two years without work, and additional money to help fund the initial proof of concept.

I’ve been hesitant to go the traditional pitch route with Hollywood after hearing so many horror stories from colleagues, especially with a story that is so personal to me. The hope is by developing so much of it first and building our own fanbase, we can maintain control over the vision and not risk losing important cultural aspects or letting the darker plot lines get watered down.

All the work I put into building my network, uplifting others and sharing knowledge over a decade have paid off because so many talented people have agreed to work on this project with me. We even received some financial grants. Every time I start doubting myself, I just have to remind myself of how many other people believe in me, believe in my vision and I’m incredibly grateful for all the support I’ve received over the years. Just gotta keep on keeping on, one foot in front of the other.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am probably widely known in the animation industry for being the Titmouse recruiter. I spent three years there, where I built a custom recruiting pipeline, an internship program and helped one of the co-founders, Shannon Prynoski, develop accelerator programs and scholarships for her non-profit, the Titmouse Foundation.

Growing up, my mom was not great at explaining things, I think a lot of Chinese parents kind of just expect you to know how to do stuff without any guidance, which is absolutely wild. I had to learn a lot of stuff myself. If I messed up, I was ridiculed for it without being taught what the right way was. I don’t want others to go through the same situation so I’m extremely proud of giving actionable, practical advice on topics like how to become a successful artist in the TV episodic and commercial animation industry through my lectures and mentorship programs over the years. My next venture is to do the same but for communication and how that is a skill that can be improved upon. I was at dinner one day sitting next to an American mom and her young daughter. She was teaching her daughter how to learn about someone by asking her questions and challenging her to think of questions to ask. Some families just do this at an early age and so they’ll get a head start in practicing these important social skills. I didn’t even realize other families actually sat down at the dinner table together and truly talked until I was in middle school. I thought that kinda stuff was just in the movies.

Currently I’m branding myself as an anime director and designer for an indie animation studio I founded called Studio MoonMoon. We specialize in 90s style anime inspired by shows like Cowboy Bebop, Golden Boy, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Satoshi Kon movies. In just two months, we’ve gained thousands of followers on social media with a pretty good average of 20k+ views per video. Our mailing list has reached over 2,500 members and we’ve got an audience of over 75k on Linkedin. Artists from all over the world have connected to my story in some way, yearning for the exact type of content I’m trying to make. It’ll be fun, have lots of cute dog content, cool kung fu choreography, but also explores what happens when we allow our own incorrect assumptions hurt our relationships with people.

After I left my position at Titmouse, I spent 6 weeks traveling all over Asia interviewing people from different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds to learn about their family dynamics. I was curious if the conflicts my mom and I had were uniquely Asian American, a product due to being raised in different cultures. But after my interviews, I realized many of our miscommunications were universal. Regardless of what culture you’re raised in, as human beings, we all suffer from loneliness. We all desire to be seen, heard and be loved for who we are. I interviewed kids that did not know if their parents loved them. On the flip side, I interviewed parents that regretted their broken relationship with their kids but didn’t know how to even start repairing it.

Hopefully I can share some examples of how through my anime series!

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Follow our socials and spread the word about our project. And please sign up for our newsletter to stay updated on when we launch our crowdfunding campaign early next year. All the links are on www.studiomoonmoon.com. We are also looking for a J-rock vocalist that can write and sing in Japanese for our trailer music so if that’s you, please shoot us an email at [email protected]!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.studiomoonmoon.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiomoonmoon/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellensu/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ellensuTV
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@StudioMoonMoon
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@studio_moonmoon