Willis Harold O'Brien was an American motion picture special effects and stop-motion animation pioneer, who according to ASIFA-Hollywood "was responsible for some of the best-known images in cinema history," and is best remembered for his work on The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949), for which he won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was an American artist, designer, visual effects creator, writer and producer who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as "Dynamation".
Mark L. Dindal is an American effects animator, film director, and screenwriter who is famous for having directed popular films like Cats Don't Dance (1997), The Emperor's New Groove (2000), and Chicken Little (2005). He worked in many Disney projects as an effects animator, and also led the special effects for several films, such as The Little Mermaid (1989) and The Rescuers Down Under (1990).
Eric Goldberg is an American animator, voice actor and film director known for his work at both Walt Disney Animation Studios and Warner Bros. Animation.
Jim Danforth is a stop-motion animator, known for model-animation and matte painting. Danforth is known for his work on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), a sequel of sorts to Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C. (1967). Danforth later went on to work with Harryhausen on the film Clash of the Titans (1981), in which he was mainly responsible for the animation of the winged-horse Pegasus.
Michel Gagné is a Canadian cartoonist.
Phil Tippett is an American movie director and Oscar and Emmy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design, stop-motion and computerized character animation. Over his career, he has assisted ILM and DreamWorks, and in 1984 formed his own company, Tippett Studio. His work has appeared in movies such as the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, and RoboCop. He is currently involved with his ongoing Mad God stop-motion series, which were funded through Kickstarter.
Carlos Saldanha is a Brazilian director, producer and animator of animated films who works with Blue Sky Studios. He was the director of Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Rio (2011), Rio 2 (2014), and the co-director of Ice Age (2002) and Robots (2005). Saldanha was nominated in 2003 for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Gone Nutty and in 2018 for Best Animated Feature for Ferdinand.
Jeff Danna is a Canadian composer.
John Powell is an English composer, best known for his scores to motion pictures. He has been based in Los Angeles since 1997 and has composed the scores to over fifty feature films. He is particularly known for his scores for animated films, including Antz, Chicken Run, Shrek, Robots, Happy Feet, Happy Feet Two, three Ice Age sequels, Bolt,Rio, Rio 2, the How to Train Your Dragon film series and Solo: A Star Wars Story. He was nominated for an Academy Award for How to Train Your Dragon. His work on Happy Feet, Ferdinand and Solo: A Star Wars Story has earned him 3 Grammy nominations.
Barry Cook is an American film director who has worked in the animated film industry since the 1980s. Cook and Tony Bancroft directed Mulan (1998) and won the 1998 Annie Award for Best Animated Feature. Cook was also the co-director for Arthur Christmas (2011), directed by Sarah Smith. Cook also directed Walking with Dinosaurs (2013) with Neil Nightingale.
Harley Jessup is an American production designer and visual effects art director who has been nominated for two visual effects Academy Awards, and won once. Currently working at Pixar Animation Studios, Jessup has served as production designer for Monsters, Inc., Ratatouille, Cars 2, Presto, The Good Dinosaur and Pixar's latest animated feature, Coco. Before coming to Pixar, Jessup was production designer on Walt Disney Pictures' James and the Giant Peach.
Donald Hall is an American film director, writer, and voice actor at Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is known for co-directing Winnie the Pooh (2011), Big Hero 6 (2014), which was inspired by the Marvel Comics team of the same name, and Moana (2016), along with Ron Clements and John Musker. Big Hero 6 won the Oscar, Golden Globe, and Annie Award for Best Animated Feature in 2015.
Georg Kaltenbrunner is a visual effects artist, who has won two Annie Awards.
Michael Marcuzzi is a visual effects artist.
Jihyun Yoon is a visual effects artist.
Sharon Calahan is an American cinematographer who was director of photography on the Pixar films A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Finding Nemo (2003), and was lighting director for Ratatouille (2007), Cars 2 (2011), and The Good Dinosaur (2015). She took part in the early rise of computer animated feature filmmaking and the acceptance of that medium as cinematography. Calahan is the first member of the American Society of Cinematographers who was invited to join on the basis of a career entirely in animated film. She was nominated, with Bill Reeves, Eben Ostby, and Rick Sayre, for a 2000 BAFTA Award for Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects for A Bug's Life.
