Simon Otto makes his feature directorial debut on That Christmas. Prior to joining the team at Locksmith Animation, he directed the Love, Death and Robots episode from Season 2, ‘The Tall Grass,’ and developed, executive produced and served as the Supervising Director on the successful Netflix series A Tale Dark & Grimm. He also directed episodes on the Netflix animated series Dragons: Race to the Edge and Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia.

Otto spent over 20 years working at DreamWorks Animation, most notably as the Head of Character Animation on the Oscar®-nominated How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. In that role, Simon oversaw the character animation and was instrumental in designing and developing the look of the characters, their personalities, and the overall style of the animation, while also working in the story department as a story artist. He first joined DreamWorks in 1997 to work on the groundbreaking The Prince of Egypt and worked as a Supervising Animator both in hand-drawn and CG animation on many of the studio’s features including, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and the Aardman co-production Flushed Away.

Born and raised in Switzerland, Simon studied animation at the prestigious Les Gobelins Animation School in Paris, France.