If you look in the credits of several Disney-Pixar films, you might start to notice a pattern: namely, how some of the same crew or cast members keep appearing. Listed here are some of the recurring directors, writers, and other notable people behind some of the best CGI films ever made.
Directors and Writers
Pete Docter
Pete Docter is perhaps the most reliable and well-established name in all of Pixar. Having stuck around since the beginning of Toy Story, he has directed four feature-length films, all of which were critical and commercial triumphs. When John Lasseter left Pixar, Docter was selected as his successor for the position of Chief Creative Officer. Docter also worked on the story team for the first two Toy Story films and WALL•E. He was also picked by Lasseter to take care of the English dub of Howl's Moving Castle while Lasseter was busy working on Cars. Somewhat notorious amongst the staff for creating some of the studio's broadest and, as a result, most difficult concepts to realize. His movies are also some of the most personal, with growing up with his daughter providing the direct inspiration for his first three films.
Shorts and features he's directed/written:
- Toy Story (screenwriter, 1995)
- Toy Story 2 (screenwriter, 1999)
- Monsters, Inc. (director, 2001)
- Mike's New Car (director, 2002)
- WALL•E (screenwriter, 2008)
- Up (director, 2009)
- Inside Out (director, 2015)
- Soul (director, 2020)
Brad Bird
One of Lasseter's old friends at Cal Arts, where they were in the same character animation class in Room A113. A latecomer to Pixar, Bird already had some directing experience before coming on board. His most notable pre-Pixar works are the "Family Dog" episode of Amazing Stories and the 1999 Warner Bros film The Iron Giant. He also worked on The Plague Dogs (1982), a dark and gritty British animated film based on the sequel to Watership Down; co-wrote Steven Spielberg's *batteries not included; and directed two episodes of The Simpsons (both centered around Krusty the Clown), as well as the music video for Do the Bartman.
After the financial failure of Giant, Bird moved on to Pixar, where he pitched a little idea he had for a feature film about superheroes. The Incredibles became a huge hit, and Brad was later asked to take over the then-in-production film Ratatouille after the original director, Jan Pinkava, was unable to bring it to a satisfying conclusion. While Ratatouille wasn't as big a financial success, it still did very well at the box office and with the critics.
As well as directing, Brad Bird sometimes does a little voice work for his films. You may remember him as the voice of the scene-stealing Edna Mode in The Incredibles.
He was working on a live-action film titled 1906, jointly produced by Disney, Pixar, and (you read that right) Disney's old rival Warner Bros., which centered around the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. After the project was put in Development Hell due to budgetary concerns, Bird would instead make his mark in live-action with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland. He would later return to Pixar with Incredibles 2, the long awaited sequel to The Incredibles, in 2018.
He has also famously threatened in the DVD Commentary for The Incredibles to punch out the next person who calls animation a "genre", as he believes it is a medium that can tell any kind of story.
Shorts and features he's directed:
- Amazing Stories: "Family Dog" episode (1987)
- The Iron Giant (1999)
- The Incredibles (2004)
- Jack-Jack Attack (2005)
- Ratatouille (2007)
- Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
- Tomorrowland (2015)
- Incredibles 2 (2018)
Lee Unkrich
Lee Unkrich has co-directed and edited films since he joined the team in 1994. Originally an editor on Toy Story and A Bug's Life, he's co-directed three other Pixar films. His first directing project was Toy Story 3. He is also quite fond of Twitter and spent the first few days after Toy Story 3's release reading through fans' tweets and reviews that were sent to him, in many cases replying to them individually thanking them for the support.
Oh, and he really likes monkeys. And The Shining, imagine that.
On February 2019, he stepped down from Pixar, stating he wanted to focus more of his time on his family.
Films he's directed:
- Toy Story 2 (co-director, 1999)
- Monsters, Inc. (co-director, 2001)
- Finding Nemo (co-director, 2003)
- Toy Story 3 (2010)
- Coco (director, 2017)
Gary Rydstrom
Gary Rydstrom is probably most famous for his sound design work on films like Jurassic Park, Titanic (1997), and Saving Private Ryan. His first work for Pixar, in fact, was the sound design for the first five Pixar Shorts directed by John Lasseter. He then became the go-to guy for sound design and mixing from the first Toy Story movie to Finding Nemo and returned in 2012 with Brave. He made his directorial debut with the theatrical short Lifted. He was slated to direct Newt, but following its cancellation, he instead directed Hawaiian Vacation before moving back to Skywalker Sound the year of its release. Outside of Pixar, he has directed the English dubs of four Studio Ghibli films: Tales from Earthsea, The Borrower Arrietty (North American Dub), From Up on Poppy Hill, and The Wind Rises. Most recently, he directed Strange Magic at Lucasfilm.
Shorts and features he's directed:
- Lifted (2006)
- Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation (2011)
- Strange Magic (2015)
Joe Ranft
Joe Ranft worked on scripts and storyboards for many animated films, both Pixar and non-Pixar. After doing story work on The Brave Little Toaster, Ranft worked on several Disney films, from Oliver & Company to Beauty and the Beast to The Lion King. He joined Pixar in 1992, and did story work on Toy Story (the most famous scene he storyboarded being the "Army Men" scene in that film). Ranft went on to write and storyboard other animated films, including most of Pixar's, and also voiced a few characters in several films, including Heimlich the caterpillar in A Bug's Life, Wheezy the penguin in Toy Story 2, Claws Ward in Monsters Inc, and Jacques the shrimp in Finding Nemo. He was later made co-director of Cars.
Sadly, Joe Ranft died in a car crash in August of 2005 and those who knew him were struck hard. Both Cars and Corpse Bride (which he helped produce) are dedicated to his memory. Henry Selick put his caricature into the design of one of the Ranft brother characters, moving furniture, in Coraline. He was later paid tribute to in Soul where he is listed as one of the great minds of history who attempted to mentor 22.
Films he wrote/directed:
- The Brave Little Toaster (screenwriter, 1987)
- Oliver & Company (story, 1988)
- The Little Mermaid (story, 1989)
- The Rescuers Down Under (screenwriter, 1990)
- Beauty and the Beast (story, 1991)
- The Nightmare Before Christmas (story, 1993)
- The Lion King (story, 1994)
- Toy Story (story, 1995)
- James and the Giant Peach (story, 1996)
- A Bug's Life (story, 1998)
- Toy Story 2 (story, 1999)
- Fantasia 2000 (story, 2000)
- Monsters, Inc. (story, 2001)
- Cars (writer/co-director, 2006)
Bob Peterson
Bob Peterson has mainly worked on storyboards and scripts for Pixar. Originally an animator on Toy Story, he moved on to do story work on A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2. He then became a co-writer on the script for Finding Nemo, and worked on the story for Ratatouille. He was the co-director of the film Up, and provided the voices of Roz in Monsters, Inc., Mr. Ray in Finding Nemo and Dug in Up.
He was to make his directorial debut in The Good Dinosaur but problems with the story pushed back its release date by two years, as John Lasseter didn't want to have any more critical flops after their last three. He would later make a proper directorial debut by directing all ten shorts in the Forky Asks a Question series.
Films he's written/directed:
- A Bug's Life (story, 1998)
- Toy Story 2 (story, 1999)
- Finding Nemo (co-writer, 2003)
- Ratatouille (story, 2007)
- Up (co-director, 2009)
- Forky Asks a Question (director, 2019-2020)
- Dug Days (director, 2021)
Brenda Chapman
Originally at Disney, she joined DreamWorks when former studio chief Jeff Katzenberg started the firm up and directed The Prince Of Egypt. She became disenchanted with DWA and jumped to Pixar as a creative team member and director of Brave. Sadly, a bout of Executive Meddling regarding that movie led to her transferring to ILM and then back to Katzenberg and DreamWorks when Disney purchased ILM as part of their Lucasfilm package.
Films she wrote/directed:
- Beauty and the Beast (story, 1991)
- The Lion King (story supervisor, 1994)
- The Prince of Egypt (director, 1998) note
- Fantasia 2000 (story, 1999)
- Brave (director, 2012)
Dan Scanlon
Films he's directed:
- Mater and the Ghostlight (co-director, 2006)
- Tracy (2009) (Amateur mockumentary, available through his Funny Or Die
account) - Monsters University (director, 2013)
- Onward (director, 2020)
Josh Cooley
Joshua Cooley started as a storyboard artist on The Incredibles and several other Pixar films, both feature-length and short. He made his feature directorial debut with Toy Story 4.
Films he's directed:
- Riley's First Date? (2015)
- Toy Story 4 (2019)
Domee Shi
Starting as a storyboard artist on Inside Out, Domee Shi is often seen as the face of the next generation of Pixar talent. This is in large part because she is the first woman to direct a Pixar short film and the first woman to direct a Pixar featurenote . She made her feature directorial debut with Turning Red.
Films she's directed:
- Bao (2018)
- Turning Red (2022)
Composers
Randy Newman
Randy Newman was, of course, already a well-established singer, songwriter, and composer by the time he was hired to work on the score for Toy Story (despite the skepticism of Disney executives). Since then, he's done the score for nine Pixar films, and he can thank the studio - or, more specifically, Monsters, Inc. - for finally getting him an Oscar in 2002 (for Best Song) after being nominated fifteen times. He's also responsible for the saddest song in the Pixar Canon: "When She Loved Me (Jessie's Song)" from Toy Story 2.
Pixar shorts and features he's written and performed music for:
- Toy Story (1995)
- A Bug's Life (1998)
- Toy Story 2 (1999)
- Monsters, Inc. (2001)
- Mike's New Car (2002)
- Cars (2006)
- Toy Story 3 (2010)
- Monsters University (2013)
- Cars 3 (2017)
- Toy Story 4 (2019)
Thomas Newman
Like his cousin, Randy, Thomas Newman already had experience as a composer before he was hired by Pixar. He was first hired to write the score for Finding Nemo, which he got an Oscar nod for. Perhaps not so coincidentally, his second work for Pixar was another Andrew Stanton film, WALL•E.
Pixar features he's written music for:
- Finding Nemo (2003)
- WALL•E (2008)
- Finding Dory (2016)
Michael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino was a fairly unknown composer for video games and TV shows when Brad Bird asked him to do the score for The Incredibles. The jazzy, James Bond-esque score won him two Grammy nominations, and his later score for Ratatouille got him his first Oscar nomination. Up won Best Original Score. Even as he gets more work in feature film scores, he's still writing music for Pixar films and shorts.
Pixar features and shorts he's written music for:
- The Incredibles (2004)
- One-Man Band (2005)
- Lifted (2006)
- Ratatouille (2007)
- Up (2009)
- Partly Cloudy (2009)
- Cars 2 (2011)
- Inside Out (2015)
- Coco (2017)
- Incredibles 2 (2018)
- Lightyear (2022)
Voice Actors
John Ratzenberger
Of course, this page would not be complete without Pixar's "lucky charm", John Ratzenberger, who has done a voice for every single feature film Pixar has made up to Soulnote . Known by older audiences as Cliff the mailman from Cheers, it was this role that lead to him being cast for Toy Story. Since then, he's always had a role, however minor, in every feature produced at the studio, to the point where Andrew Stanton just decided to name Ratzenberger's role after him in WALL•E, and the practice was lampshaded in a credits sequence in Cars.
The characters he's voiced include:
- Hamm, the piggy bank (the Toy Story films)
- P.T. Flea (A Bug's Life)
- The Abominable Snowman (Monsters, Inc.)
- The school of Moonfish (Finding Nemo)
- The Underminer (The Incredibles)
- Mack (the Cars films)
- Mustafa, the waiter at Gusteau's (Ratatouille)
- John (WALL•E)
- Tom, the Foreman of the construction work around Carl's house (Up)
- Gordon, the Guard (Brave)
- Fritz, the Brain Worker (Inside Out)
- Earl, the Velociraptor (The Good Dinosaur)
- Bill, the Crab (Finding Dory)
- Juan Ortodoncia (Coco)
- Construction Worker Fenwick (Onward)
- Non-speaking cameo (Soul)
Behind the Scenes
Edwin Catmull
Ed Catmull was recruited by George Lucas in 1979 to head up a group to bring computer graphics and digital editing to film. There, he developed digital image compositing technology for blending multiple images and computer-graphics algorithms such as the Catmull-Rom spline and the Catmull–Clark subdivision surface. When Steve Jobs bought Lucasarts' digital division and founded Pixar, Catmull was appointed Chief Technical Officer, where he was a key developer of Pixar's RenderMan film rendering system.
Ed currently serves as president of both Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Steve Jobs
After he was fired from Apple and founded NeXT, Steve Jobs bought Pixar off of Lucasfilm in 1986 for $10 million, largely on the strength of John Lasseter's belief in the future of computer animation. Jobs continued to pour money into Pixar even as it failed to profit as a medical imaging software company, and allowed it to find its footing producing computer-animated commercials. Jobs' tenacity was ultimately vindicated by the subsequent success of Pixar, and he was the largest shareholder in both Disney and Pixar, with 7% of the shares.
Word of God is that Steve Jobs was fairly hands-on during the production of Toy Story, holding daily reviews and making suggestions to John Lasseter, which resulted in Jobs being credited as "Producer". After Toy Story, Jobs tended to be more of a hands-off leader who trusted the Pixar staff to guide things — though he did intercede from time to time, such as the renegotiation of distribution agreements with Disney, and the design of Pixar's expanded Emeryville studio.
Sadly, Steve Jobs passed away in 2011 of pancreatic cancer.
Darla K Anderson
Producer of A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Cars, Toy Story 3, and several Pixar Shorts, Darla has also received special thanks for her involvement with almost every other Pixar project, starting from Toy Story onward. Currently holds the Guinness World Record for having the highest average gross per movie for a producer ($221 million per movie) though given the company she works for that's hardly surprising. The character of Darla was named after her by Stanton as revenge for all the practical jokes she's played on him.
Recently appeared in a tear-jerkingly, awesomely heartwarming video for the It Gets Better project, where she and other gay members of the Pixar family offered words of encouragement to gay teens and by extension just about anyone who feels like they've been Driven to Suicide.
Bud Luckey
John Lasseter called him "the true unsung hero of animation", so Bud Luckey may not be as new a name as many would think. You seen that "10 Tiny Turtles" hand-drawn sequence featured in the earlier episodes of Sesame Street? That's his animation. Now, his low, elderly, but comforting voice made him a returning voice actor and employee of Pixar. It was he who decided that the "old toy" character in Toy Story would be a cowboy doll and designed Woody's final look. He later wrote, designed, storyboarded, composed, sang, and voiced Boundin', a short inspired by his Montana upbringing and the myths that came with it. He also illustrated over 100 children's books. He passed away of natural causes on February 24, 2018.
Disney/Pixar shorts and features he's written and performed music for:
- Character designer on all Pixar films until his death in 2018.
- Produced and directed the short "Boundin'" (2003).
- Voice of Rick Dicker in The Incredibles (2004) and the short "Jack Jack Attack" (2005).
- Voice of Chuckles the clown doll in Toy Story 3 (2010).
- Voice of Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh (2011).
