Matthew Luhn | |
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Occupation | Writer, animator, speaker |
Nationality | American |
Period | 1992–present |
Genre | Storytelling |
Website | |
matthewluhnstory |
Matthew Luhn is an American writer, story consultant, animator, director, creative writing instructor and keynote speaker known for creating stories and characters, most notably at Pixar and The Simpsons. [1]
Luhn attended the character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, and after his first-year student film, he was offered his first animation job. Dropping out of CalArts, Luhn's career began at 19 years old, as the youngest animator to work on The Simpsons TV series. His work includes Kamp Krusty (1992), Lisa's Pony (1992), Homer Alone (1992), Colonel Homer (1992), Homer Defined (1992), and Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk (1992). [2] Shortly thereafter, he joined Pixar Animation Studios, becoming one of the first 12 animators on the studio's feature film, Toy Story. After working on Toy Story, Luhn worked for the next twenty years at Pixar as a story artist and writer. Luhn currently works as a story consultant, director, and writer.
Alongside his story work in Hollywood, Luhn is also a keynote speaker who trains chief executive officers, marketing teams, directors and other professionals how to craft and tell stories for Fortune 500 companies, Academy Award-winning movies and corporate brands. [3] [4] [5] [6] Matthew also gave a TEDx Talk at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [7] [8]
Toy Story is a 1995 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the franchise of the same name, it was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film from Pixar. It was directed by John Lasseter and produced by Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, from a screenplay written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow and a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft. The film features music by Randy Newman, and was executive-produced by Steve Jobs and Edwin Catmull. The film features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf, and Erik von Detten.
Pixar Animation Studios 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.
Tin Toy is a 1988 American animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The short film, which runs for five minutes, stars Tinny, a tin one-man band toy, trying to escape from Billy, a human baby. The third short film produced by the company's small animation division, it was a risky investment: due to the low revenue produced by Pixar's main product, the Pixar Image Computer, the company was under financial constraints.
Phillip Bradley Bird is an American director, producer, writer, animator, and voice actor. He has had a career spanning forty years in both animation and live-action.
John Alan Lasseter is an American film director, producer, and animator. He has served as the Head of Animation at Skydance Animation since 2019. Previously, he acted as the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Peter Hans Docter is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator. He has served as the chief creative officer (CCO) of Pixar Animation Studios since 2018, and is best known for directing the animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020). He has been nominated for nine Oscars and has won three for Best Animated Feature—for Up, Inside Out and Soul—making him the first person in history to win the category three times. He has also been nominated for nine Annie Awards, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He has described himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".
Andrew Ayers Stanton is an American filmmaker and voice actor based at Pixar, which he joined in 1990. His film work includes co-writing and co-directing Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998), directing Finding Nemo (2003) and its sequel Finding Dory (2016), WALL-E (2008), and the live-action film, Disney's John Carter (2012), and co-writing all four Toy Story films (1995–2019) and Monsters, Inc. (2001).
Jim Reardon is an American animator, storyboard artist, screenwriter, and film and television director. He is best known for his work on the animated TV series The Simpsons. He has directed over 30 episodes of the series and was credited as a supervising director for seasons 9 through 15. He has been described by Ralph Bakshi as "one of the best cartoon writers in the business".
Joseph Henry Ranft was an American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation. His younger brother Jerome Ranft is a sculptor who also worked on several Pixar films.
William Everett "Bud" Luckey was an American artist, cartoonist, illustrator, musician, singer and voice actor. He worked at the animation studio Pixar, where he worked as a character designer on a number of films, including Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars and Ratatouille. Luckey was also the voice of Rick Dicker in The Incredibles, Chuckles the Clown in Toy Story 3 and as Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh (2011).
Robert Peterson is an American animator, director, screenwriter, storyboard supervisor and voice actor who works at Pixar. He was hired at Pixar by Roger Gould in 1994 as an animator for commercials, before subsequently becoming an animator on Toy Story (1995). He was the co-director and co-writer for Up (2009), in which he also voiced the characters Dug and Alpha. His work as a writer for the films Up and Finding Nemo (2003) earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He was also a co-writer on Cars 3 (2017) and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program for his work on Forky Asks A Question (2020).
Ralph Eggleston was an American animator, art director, storyboard artist, and production designer at Pixar Animation Studios. He won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for For the Birds.
Jill Culton is an American animator, storyboard artist, director, and screenwriter. With her directorial debut on Sony's first animated film, Open Season, she became the first female principal director of a big budget, computer-animated feature.
Doug Sweetland is an American animator and filmmaker. He directed the short film Presto (2008) and the feature film Storks (2016).
Jeff Pidgeon is an American animator, screenwriter, storyboard artist and voice actor at Pixar.
Jonas H. Rivera is an American film producer. He produced the animated films Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), Toy Story 4 (2019) and Soul (2020), all of which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Rivera is an alumnus of San Francisco State University and has worked with Pixar Animation Studios since 1994.
Angus MacLane is an American animator, filmmaker and voice actor, best known for his work at Pixar Animation Studios. He co-directed the film Finding Dory (2016) and made his solo feature directorial debut with the Toy Story spin-off film Lightyear (2022). MacLane is also a Lego enthusiast and created the CubeDudes building format and designed a LEGO WALL-E that has become an official set from The Lego Group.
Sanjay Patel is an American animator, illustrator and author who has worked in the animation department of various projects, most of them animated films released by Pixar.
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.