Ho boy, getting into esoteric Jazz lore a moment here: No actually, not Dean Dodrill. He did the excellent opening animation on Jazz 2, which still gives me chills to this day, but like the music (where the new tracks on 2 were done by the amazing Alexander Brandon, later to be of Unreal and Deus Ex tracker fame, but the first game's score was by Robert A. Allen), animation and styling for the characters in general was done by Nick Stadler on Jazz 1. Kind of a sad story: he went to school for animation, hoping to work on big movies and shows, and took the gig with Epic as a stepping stone, a quick stop to gain experience on his resume. Finished up, they offered to let keep him on, but he was set on going on to "real" work in entertainment. Aaaand then Toy Story happened, and suddenly no one would hire new animators if they couldn't do this new 3d thing. As a side bar, that MIGHT also be why so many games, especially edutainment titles in the late 90s had such lush 2d animation: There was a whole crop of traditionally trained animators that couldn't get jobs in the industry anymore, but the gaming world was thrilled to have them, as multimedia and CD ROM was just becoming a thing, and it would be eons before PCs could do decent real-time 3d.
He ended up doing illustration work for an LGBT magazine for a while (I believe he was gay himself) and then just kinda faded from public view. In hindsight, ouch, should have stuck with Epic, though I'm sure that would have had its own issues.
Heh, but yeah, lot of fun stuff in that game. Very jank in places, but beautiful art and music.
