Kendal Cronkhite was most recently the Production Designer for DreamWorks Animation's Trolls .
She started her career in film as the assistant art director for Disney's critical and commercial success, The Nightmare Before Christmas . In 1996, she worked as an art director alongside Bill Boes on Disney's James and the Giant Peach.
In 1998, she art directed Antz for the newly founded DreamWorks Animation. Following the success of this film, she went on to work as a production designer on several films for the studio, including Madagascar and its sequels, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted . The series was a critical and commercial success, and became a staple franchise for the studio.
In 2016, she production designed Trolls, another critical and commercial success. In 2020, she production designed the film's sequel, Trolls World Tour , which proved another success and was considered significant in its online-only release due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Cronkhite is highly regarded as a Production Designer, having been a staple at DreamWorks for over twenty years.
Modern animation in the United States from the late 1980s to 2004 is frequently referred to as the renaissance age of American animation. During this period, many large American entertainment companies reformed and reinvigorated their animation departments, following the dark age, and the United States had an influence on global and worldwide animation.
Jeffrey Katzenberg is an American media proprietor and film producer who has been serving as president of Universal Animation Studios. He previously served as chairman of Walt Disney Studios from 1984 to 1994, a position in which he oversaw production and business operations for the company's feature films. Following his departure, he co-founded DreamWorks SKG in 1994, where he served as the company's chief executive officer (CEO) and executive producer of its animated franchises—including Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon—until stepping down from the title in 2016. He has since founded the venture capital firm WndrCo in 2017, which invests in digital media projects, and launched Quibi in 2020, a defunct short-form mobile video platform that lost US$1.35 billion in seven months.
Donald Virgil Bluth is an American filmmaker, animator, video game designer and author. He is best known for directing the animated films The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Anastasia and Titan A.E., for his involvement in the LaserDisc games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, and for competing with former employer Walt Disney Productions during the years leading up to the films that became the Disney Renaissance.
Philip Bradley Bird is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. He has had a career spanning over four decades in both animation and live-action.
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that produces animated feature films and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney after the closure of Laugh-O-Gram Studio, it is the longest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 63 feature films, with its first release being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which is also the first hand drawn animated feature film, and its most recent release was Moana 2 (2024). The studio has also produced hundreds of short films.
DreamWorks Animation LLC (DWA) (also known as DreamWorks Animation Studios or simply DreamWorks) is an American animation studio owned by Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The studio has produced a total of 49 feature films, including several of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, with Shrek 2 (2004) having been the highest at the time of its release. Its first film, Antz, was released on October 2, 1998, and its latest film, The Wild Robot, was released on September 27, 2024. They have an upcoming theatrical slate of films, which includes Dog Man on January 31, 2025, the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon on June 13, 2025, The Bad Guys 2 on August 1, 2025, Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie on September 26, 2025, and Shrek 5 on December 23, 2026.
Mark Dindal is an American filmmaker, animator and voice actor. Best known for his work at Disney, he directed the company's 2000 animated film The Emperor's New Groove (2000), as well as their 2005 film Chicken Little. Prior, he was credited with animation work on the Disney Renaissance films The Little Mermaid (1989) and Aladdin (1992), as well as Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992). In 1997, he briefly moved to Warner Bros. Animation and made his directorial debut with the film Cats Don't Dance, which won an Annie Award for Best Animated Film. Dindal directed the 2024 animated film The Garfield Movie for Sony Pictures and Alcon Entertainment, which was met with commercial success despite negative reviews.
Fox Animation Studios was an American animation studio owned by 20th Century Fox and located in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox Animation and was established by animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. It operated for six years, until the studio was shut down on June 26, 2000, ten days after the release of its final film, Titan A.E.. Most of the Fox Animation Studios library was later acquired by Disney on March 20, 2019. Anastasia is the studio's most critically praised and commercially successful film, as well as the most commercially successful film by Don Bluth.
Christopher Michael Sanders is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. His credits include Lilo & Stitch (2002) and How to Train Your Dragon (2010), both of which he co-wrote and directed with Dean DeBlois; The Croods (2013) with Kirk DeMicco; The Call of the Wild (2020); and The Wild Robot (2024). He created the character Stitch in 1985, wrote the film's story, and voiced Stitch in almost all his media appearances.
Robert Ralph Minkoff is an American director, animator, and producer. He is best known for co-directing The Lion King, and live-action films including Stuart Little (1999), Stuart Little 2 (2002), The Haunted Mansion (2003), and The Forbidden Kingdom (2008). In recent decades, he returned to feature animation with Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014) and Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022). His wife, Crystal Kung Minkoff, was a cast member on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Gary Trousdale is an American animator, film director, screenwriter and storyboard artist. He is best known for directing films such as Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). He frequently works with Kirk Wise and Don Hahn.
Dean Allan DeBlois is a Canadian filmmaker and animator. He is best known for writing and directing the Oscar-nominated animated feature films Lilo & Stitch for Walt Disney Animation Studios, the How to Train Your Dragon film trilogy for DreamWorks Animation, and directing the documentary Heima about the Icelandic band Sigur Rós.
Don Bluth Entertainment was an Irish-American animation studio established in 1979 by animator Don Bluth. Bluth and several colleagues, all of whom were former Disney animators, left Disney on September 13, 1979, to form Don Bluth Productions, later known as the Bluth Group. This studio produced the short film Banjo the Woodpile Cat, the feature film The Secret of NIMH, a brief animation sequence in the musical Xanadu, and the video games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Bluth then co-founded Sullivan Bluth Studios with American businessman Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy and Morris Sullivan in 1985.
Eric Darnell is an American animator, storyboard artist, director, screenwriter, songwriter and occasional voice actor best known for co-directing Antz with Tim Johnson, as well as co-directing and co-writing Madagascar, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted with Tom McGrath, as well as the spin off Penguins of Madagascar (2014) with Simon J. Smith.
Thomas McGrath is an American voice actor, animator and filmmaker. He is known for the DreamWorks animated film Madagascar, which he co-wrote and directed with Eric Darnell while voicing the character of Skipper the Penguin. The film spawned two direct sequels, along with a spin-off animated series and film based on the penguins in which McGrath reprised his role as Skipper. McGrath also directed the DreamWorks animated films Megamind (2010) and The Boss Baby (2017), the latter of which received an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nomination. McGrath returned as director for its 2021 sequel.
Victoria Jenson is an American film director of both live action and animated films. She has directed projects for DreamWorks Animation, including Shrek, the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, giving rise to one of Hollywood's largest film franchises.
The Disney Renaissance was a period from 1989 to 1999 during which Walt Disney Feature Animation returned to producing commercially and/or critically successful animated films. The ten feature films associated with this period are The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Mulan (1998), and Tarzan (1999).
Walter Dohrn is an American writer, director, animator, musician, and actor. He performed the voice of Rumpelstiltskin in Shrek Forever After (2010), as well as various characters in Shrek the Third (2007). He co-directed the film Trolls (2016) and directed its sequels, and voiced various characters in the franchise. He is directing Shrek 5, set for release in 2026. Dohrn has also worked as writer, director, and storyboard director in Season 2 of SpongeBob SquarePants, and he also worked on 2 episodes from Season 3. In 2020, Dohrn signed a deal with DreamWorks Animation.
Simon James Smith is a British animator, film director, and voice actor. He is best known for his work at DreamWorks Animation. Smith came to PDI/DreamWorks in 1997 as head of layout for the company's feature film division. A CG animation veteran with nearly 35 years of experience, Smith supervised the layout department on PDI/DreamWorks' first animated feature Antz (1998), serving as the head of layout in Shrek (2001). He then directed the Universal Studios Theatre experience Shrek 4-D, followed by the short Far Far Away Idol. His first feature film as a director was in 2007, with Bee Movie. He then directed another DVD short, Megamind: The Button of Doom, before co-directing, with Eric Darnell, the comedy/spy action spin-off from the Madagascar series, Penguins of Madagascar, the mini series Baymax Dreams for Disney, and is executive producer on Batwheels for Warner Bros.