Misha Petrick Strives to Tell Emotionally True Stories

Animation Creative Director Misha Petrick has been involved in many projects in his career, but the introduction his studio prepared for the annual G8 Creative Industries Festival both challenged his team and allowed them to show off their creative prowess. The two-minute-and-10-second video portrays four unique stories about the creative process through the eyes of four different characters.

Made to echo the theme of the 2025 festival, Polyphony, the project involved a team of 33 people to produce and eventually won Petrick Animation several awards. For Petrick Misha, it was one of the projects he has felt most personally connected to, as it mirrors his journey as a Creative Director.

Petrick Misha has always had a creative mind, but he has found different outlets for his imagination. For years he worked as an art director and in graphic design before setting up his own studio in 2015, where he continues to serve as CEO and creative director. Here Misha and his team have worked to apply their creative skill in commercial projects, specializing in animated advertising for brands, and creating animated commercials that sit at the intersection of creativity, storytelling, and commercial communication.

At first, he did a lot of the work himself, taking on briefs and focusing on animation quality. But over time, Petrick Animation leveled up in design and then in directing. These days, the studio also writes stories and develops creative concepts for its clients, not just executing briefs. Misha is picky about who he works with, and once the right team is in place, it works with real passion.

"My team and I don't just execute, we push," says Misha. "I encourage everyone to bring more than they were asked for, to find the twist nobody expected," he goes on. "All in service of one slightly obsessive goal: a video you don't just watch once and forget. The kind you send to someone at midnight saying, 'okay, you have to see this.'"

It all started with Disney. An artistically inclined youth, Petrick Misha grew up soaking up The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book and Robin Hood, "films where every frame felt hand-crafted and alive." Pixar films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Inside Out and Soul have only inspired him further. He credits these films as benchmarks, noting that while being technically brilliant, they are also emotionally true.

While animated films inspired Misha's career path, he was also influenced by graphic design. He still has the eye of a designer, thinking in terms of compositions, type, and space. "Some of my closest references and friendships come from the worlds of typography, graphic design, and architecture, and that cross-pollination quietly shapes everything I make," says Misha.

Animation, in his view, made sense as a field where he could apply his talents. Other projects that he's proud of include a social campaign for WWF, which received numerous awards. Petrick Animation has also seen two of its works, MAD MAX Fury Road and Instagram for Win95 well received on the Behance platform, ranking among the top 30 on Behance in its entire history.

"This is a pretty unexpected and rewarding result considering the millions of projects published there," Misha says.

While Petrick Animation continues to thrive in serving its clients, Misha remains an artist at heart. He's currency reading Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as well as the works of Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare.

"There's something in the way both of them handle silence, subtext, and the space between words that feels directly relevant to storytelling in animation," says Misha. Doing just that remains his core goal, especially as he tries to convey emotions, ideas and perspectives to his audiences. "The frame-by-frame process, when done with intention, has a weight to it that you can feel but can't quite explain," he says. "That's what I'm always chasing."

What's next? Misha is working on a personal creative project that could turn into a feature-length animated film, something intended for audiences, not only clients. He also wants to expand in the US. Petrick Animation tapped Masters & Savant to represent it there. "This opens up exciting opportunities," Misha says. "We plan to grow our work in animated projects and character-driven content for brands and the gaming industry within this market."