Dodd started drawing cartoons when he was around 8 years old. he had his own set of eight characters that were all bugs with personalities. He filled up sheets of scrap paper and made several comic book issues. He sold the comic books at his elementary school. He started creating animation at the age of 10 by drawing sequential frames of action on the bottom corners of books laying around the house. By the age of 12 he had my own 8mm movie camera capable of single-frame animation which he used to make clay-animation as well as cell-animation films. Several years later he came across one of the first Radio Shack computers. After playing with it for a few hours he became very interested in using the computer to create graphics and animation. He started out writing video games in machine language on a Timex-Sinclair computer. As he went on to junior high and high school doing animation faded into the past. He went on to graduate from the Ohio State University with a double degree in Physics and Electrical Engineering. He hadn't owned a computer since junior high. Shortly after graduation he bought a 386-based computer and, in his spare time, started doing computer graphics and animation. He loved it so much that he started doing it in all of his spare time. Within two years he quit his day-time job and decided to make it his life's pursuit.