Iowa native Stephen Jennings left the state to pursue a career in the film industry. While living in California, he worked on several blockbuster projects, including “Spider-Man” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” In 2002, he began his own animation company, but was lured back to Iowa and his hometown by the state’s film tax credit program. When a 2009 audit of the state’s tax credit program found several cases of fraud, the program was suspended. Jennings, who was named president of the Iowa Motion Picture Association in July, said the state’s film industry is recovering from the mess and is working on improving its image.

What are some of your goals as president of the IMPA?

I was a board member for three years and was elected as president two months ago. The IMPA is interested is bringing in lots of viewpoints from outside of Des Moines and work in different mediums. I have lots of ideas on where to take it: I want to get membership moving in the right direction and working on projects and practicing their craft again. It’s also important to try to keep work in the state. We have big companies here like Nationwide and Wells Fargo who go outside of the state to film commercials. We need to try to minimize that so that we can bring more work to the state. Developing talent is another big aspect of our goals. We’d like to do that through training efforts and programs that encourage creative development so that we get out of the mindset that the tax credits are gone. We had all of these capabilities before the tax credits, and we certainly have them after.

How has the film industry responded to the tax credit scandal?

We’ve now gone through three years of this whole tax credit debacle. It’s easy to look at the film industry and say, “Why do we need this here?” Well, when work isn’t done in Iowa, people won’t pay attention to Iowa. I think many people have lumped everyone in the film industry into one category, and while there are people who have done questionable things, it’s important that we still have support from the state. This is an affordable state with lots of talent and we need to compete.

How did you become interested in animation?

Animation is always something I’ve been interested in. When I was little, I wanted to be a cartoonist, then later in life I wanted to be a graphic designer. I didn’t have a great start in high school. It was something I struggled with. I had one teacher who gave me the option to tell a story through video instead of writing an essay, and it was the first English assignment I ever got an A on. I thought to myself, “Hey, this is something I’m good at.” It gave me the motivation to start studying motion pictures. I started at a school in North Carolina, but soon left and went to another school, where I worked up my portfolio. I got into Cal Arts, and when you get in there, you just go. I never thought I would be a director. I was following what I was interested in, but also listened to what others told me I was good at.

Tell me about your animation studio.

In 2002, I opened up Grasshorse and ran it out of my apartment in California. I worked on “The Powerpuff Girls“ and “Star Wars: Clone Wars” for Cartoon Network. I moved to Iowa in 2007 to take advantage of the film tax credits. I wanted to grow my company, and it was more affordable here. My sister works as the chief executive officer and I’m the chief operating officer and the creative director. We’ve worked on feature films and some commercials.

I read that you want to start an animation festival. How’s that coming along?

There’s not a large animation festival in the Midwest, which surprised me. We’re in the very early stages of getting it up and running, and we hope it will be ready to go by next fall. We’re hoping it will draw people from all over southeastern Iowa, and maybe even from the Des Moines area. We want it to have an international reach and hope to create talent here that is able to compete. We’re envisioning having different categories like a family night, a night for adults, maybe an Iowa category.

What are some other projects you’ve worked on?

We spent three years working with Southeastern Community College to create an animation school. I’m pleased to say that there’s a lot of top talent in that school. I wrote a lot of the curriculum because it’s the first one in the state. It’s important to keep kids who are interested in animation here, rather than have them go off to Florida or California. Instead, they can study it in Burlington at a much more affordable price. As an artist, your work can only be as good as the assets you have available to you. You don’t have a lot of assets when you’re in debt.