Joe Ranft
Joseph Henry Ranft was an American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney Company|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.
Ranft's first film was The Brave Little Toaster in 1987. He received an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay nomination as one of the writers of Toy Story, and was also the co-director on Cars, his final work before his death.
Early life
Joseph Henry Ranft was born in Pasadena, California, on March 13, 1960, and raised in Whittier. His parents were James and Melissa Ranft. As a child, Ranft developed a love for magic, storytelling, film and comedy. At age 15, he became a member of the Magic Castle Junior Group. After graduating from Monte Vista High School, Whittier, in 1978, Ranft began studying in the character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts alongside John Lasseter and Brad Bird. After two years, Ranft's student film Good Humor caught the attention of Disney animation executives, who offered him a job.Career
In 1980, Ranft joined Disney as a writer and storyboard artist. During his first five years with Disney, he worked on a number of television projects that were never produced. Later in his Disney career, he was promoted into the Feature Animation department, where he was mentored by Eric Larson. Ranft later spoke about Larson's training: "He always reminds me of just the fundamental things that I tend to forget. You know, it's like, animation is so complex; 'How many drawings are in there?' and stuff, but Eric always comes back to like; 'What does the audience perceive?'"Around this time, he studied under and began performing with the improvisational group, The Groundlings. Ranft stayed with Disney throughout the 1980s, writing the story on many animated features, including Oliver & Company, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. He also worked on The Brave Little Toaster in 1987 for Hyperion Animation and James and the Giant Peach in 1996 for Allied Filmmakers.
Ranft reunited with Lasseter after joining Pixar in October 1992 as their head of story. There he worked on all of their films produced up to 2006; this included Toy Story and A Bug's Life, as the co-story writer and others as story supervisor. He also voiced characters in many of the films, including Heimlich the caterpillar in A Bug's Life, Wheezy the penguin in Toy Story 2, and Jacques the shrimp in Finding Nemo.
In the film Monsters, Inc., Ranft had a monster named after him as most of the scarers in the film were named for Pixar staff. Ranft was also given lead story credit on The Brave Little Toaster and voiced Elmo St. Peters, the appliance salesman.
His favorite writers were Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. His favorite magicians were John Carney, Daryl, Michael Ammar, Ricky Jay and Jimmy Grippo.
Ranft was posthumously honored in 2006 as a Disney Legend and in 2016 with the Winsor McCay Award, the lifetime achievement award for animators.