Rosana Sullivan | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | |
Occupations |
|
Years active | 2011–present |
Employer | Pixar Animation Studios (2011–present) |
Rosana Sullivan is an American filmmaker and storyboard artist. Since 2011, she has worked for Pixar Animation Studios. She wrote and directed her first animated short film, Kitbull (2019), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.
Rosana Sullivan was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew up in Texas. [1] She has one brother. [1] When she was in high school at age 16, her father, a university professor of biology, accepted a new job at the University of San Francisco and the family relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. [1]
Sullivan initially studied for a career as a veterinarian, enrolling at the University of San Francisco as a biology major. [2] In her junior year, she took a course in portrait painting to satisfy an art credit and realized that art was her real calling. [2] She spent her senior year at USF in the fine arts program, graduating in 2007, and then attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, graduating in 2010. [2] [3]
Sullivan worked as a lead character designer at Ooga Labs and a 2D artist at Kabam before joining Pixar Animation Studios in 2011. [3] With Pixar, she has contributed to the 3D animated films Monsters University (2013), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Piper (2016), and Incredibles 2 (2018). [4] She was nominated for a 2015 Annie Award for outstanding achievement in storyboarding in an animated feature production for her work on The Good Dinosaur. [5] In February 2019, she wrote and directed her first animated film, a nine-minute traditionally animated short called Kitbull , which is part of the SparkShorts series. [6] [7]
In April 2019, Sullivan published an autobiographical picture book, Mommy Sayang, describing the life of a girl and her mother in a Malaysian village. [8] This story, along with others that she has written, was inspired by her mother's roots in Malaysia. [1] [9]
In January 2021, it was announced that Sullivan would direct a feature film for Pixar. [10]
Year | Title | Credited as | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Director | Storyboard artist | Writer | ||
2009 | Long Shadows | No | Yes | No |
2016 | Piper | No | Yes | No |
2019 | Kitbull | Yes | Yes | Yes |
2020 | Loop | No | No | Story trust |
Year | Title | Credited as | |
---|---|---|---|
Storyboard artist | Executive producer | ||
2013 | Monsters University | Yes | No |
2015 | The Good Dinosaur | Yes | No |
2018 | Incredibles 2 | Yes | No |
2019 | Toy Story 4 | No | Associate |
2020 | Onward | Yes | No |
Soul | Yes | No | |
2022 | Turning Red | Story supervisor | No |
Award | Date | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Academy Awards | February 9, 2020 | Best Animated Short Film | Kitbull | Nominated | [13] |
Annie Awards | February 6, 2016 | Outstanding Achievement for Storyboarding in a Feature Production | The Good Dinosaur | Nominated | [14] |
Pixar Animation Studios, known simply as Pixar, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, a segment of the Walt Disney Company.
Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Mary Gibbs, and Jennifer Tilly, the film was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and produced by Darla K. Anderson, from a screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson. The film centers on two monsters, the hairy James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (Goodman) and his one-eyed partner and best friend Mike Wazowski (Crystal), who are employed at the titular energy-producing factory Monsters, Inc., which generates power by scaring human children. However, the monster world believes that the children are toxic, and when a little human girl, Boo (Gibbs), sneaks into the factory, she must be returned home before it is too late.
Peter Hans Docter is an American filmmaker and animator who has served as chief creative officer (CCO) of Pixar since 2018. He has directed the company's animated films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020). From his nine Academy Award nominations, he is a record-three time recipient of Best Animated Feature for Up, Inside Out and Soul. Docter has also won six Annie Awards from nine nominations, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He describes himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".
Floyd E. Norman is an American animator, writer, and cartoonist. Over the course of his career, he has worked for various animation companies, among them Walt Disney Animation Studios, Hanna-Barbera Productions, Ruby-Spears, Film Roman and Pixar.
Ronaldo del Carmen is a Filipino writer, director, storyboard artist, illustrator, and voice actor. He co-directed and co-wrote the story for the Pixar film Inside Out (2015), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the first Filipino to do so.
Peter Sohn is an American filmmaker, animator, storyboard artist, and voice actor. He is best known for directing the Pixar animated films The Good Dinosaur (2015) and Elemental (2023), the latter of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He also voiced Emile in Ratatouille (2007), Squishy in Monsters University (2013), Ciccio in Luca (2021), and Sox in Lightyear (2022).
Up is a 2009 American animated comedy-drama adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Bob Peterson, and produced by Jonas Rivera. Docter and Peterson also wrote the film's screenplay and story, with Tom McCarthy co-writing the latter. The film stars the voices of Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, and Bob Peterson. The film centers on Carl Fredricksen (Asner), an elderly widower who travels to South America with youngster Russell (Nagai) in order to fulfill a promise that he made to his late wife Ellie. Along the way, they meet a talking dog named Dug (Peterson) and encounter a giant bird named Kevin, and figure out someone has sinister plans to capture Kevin, who is later revealed to be Fredricksen's childhood hero, Charles Muntz (Plummer).
Toy Story is an American media franchise created by Pixar Animation Studios and owned by The Walt Disney Company. It centers on toys that, unknown to humans, are secretly living, sentient creatures. It began in 1995 with the release of the animated feature film of the same name, which focuses on a diverse group of toys featuring a classic cowboy doll named Sheriff Woody and a modern spaceman action figure named Buzz Lightyear.
Enrico Casarosa is an Italian director, screenwriter and storyboard artist. Best known for his work at Pixar, he has directed the short film La Luna (2011) and the feature film Luca (2021), which both were nominated for Academy Awards.
Inside Out is a 2015 American animated coming-of-age film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Pete Docter from a screenplay he co-wrote with Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley. The film stars the voices of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan. Inside Out follows the inner workings of the mind of Riley, a young girl who adapts to her family's relocation as five personified emotions administer her thoughts and actions.
Gini Cruz Santos is a Filipina animator at Pixar studios based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked on numerous Pixar animation films including Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Toy Story 3, Up, Lifted and Brave. She was nominated in 2004 for an Annie award for her detailed lifelike animation on Finding Nemo, and was nominated by the Visual Effects Society for an award for this project as well.
Piper is a 2016 American animated short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Written and directed by Alan Barillaro, it was theatrically released alongside Pixar's Finding Dory on June 17, 2016. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 89th Academy Awards, becoming the first Pixar animated short to win the award since For the Birds in 2001.
The Animation Showcase is a travelling film screening collection, showcasing animated short films.
Dana Leigh Murray is an American animator and film producer, best known for being the producer on the 2020 Pixar film Soul, for which she has won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, alongside its director and co-producer Pete Docter.
Domee Shi is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She has directed the short film Bao (2018) and the feature films Turning Red (2022) and the upcoming Elio (2025), becoming the first woman to direct a short film and then the first woman with sole director's credit on a feature film for Pixar.
SparkShorts is a series of American independent animated short films produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It consists of a program in which Pixar's employees are given six months and limited budgets to develop animated short films that were originally released on Pixar's YouTube channel, and later on Disney+.
Kitbull is a 2019 American traditionally animated short film and viral video directed and written by Rosana Sullivan, produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the third film in Pixar's SparkShorts program, and focuses on a fiercely independent stray kitten and an abused pit bull, who form an unlikely friendship. The short premiered at El Capitan Theatre on January 18, 2019, before being released on YouTube on February 18, 2019, and has received over 100 million views as of August 2023. The short was also released on Disney+ on November 12, 2019 and was later released in theaters on February 9, 2024 ahead of Turning Red.
Soul is a 2020 American animated fantasy comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Kemp Powers, both of whom co-wrote it with Mike Jones, and produced by Dana Murray. The film stars the voices of Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Questlove, and Angela Bassett. It follows Joe Gardner (Foxx), a middle school teacher and aspiring pianist who falls into a coma following an accident and seeks to reunite his separated soul and body in time for his big break as a jazz musician.
Twenty Something is a 2021 American 2D animated short film written and directed by Aphton Corbin, produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Starring Kaylin Price, Ariana Brown, Aliyah Taylor, Janelle Lasalle, and Napoleon Highbrou, the film focuses on Gia who deals with the insecurities of being a 21-year-old by personifying her emotions in the form of three children in a trenchcoat. The ninth short film in the SparkShorts series, the short was released on September 10, 2021, on Disney+.
In addition to Shi, Aphton Corbin and Rosana Sullivan are female story artists who have directed short films at the studio recently and are now moving into development on features.
In addition to Shi, Aphton Corbin and Rosana Sullivan are female story artists who have directed short films at the studio recently and are now moving into development on features.