In Remembrance: Joe Ranft

     Joe Ranft, the Pixar Animation Studios writer and animator who also supplied voices for many of their computer animated features, has died on August 16, 2005 following a car crash in Mendocino, California. He was 45.

     Born on March 13, 1960 in Pasadena, California, Ranft had a childhood interest in magic before gravitating towards art. It was while studying at the California Institute of the Arts, where he first met future Pixar head and fellow CalArts student John Lasseter, that Ranft saw Song Of The South story developer speaking and became interested in doing conceptual development for animated films. After studying at CalArts for two years, he landed his first job on the feature The Brave Little Toaster (1986) as a writer and the animating director. His work on Toaster was impressive enough to land him a job at Walt Disney Studios, where he was assigned to doing sketch work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

     Moving up to Disney’s story department, Ranft oversaw the story development of Oliver & Company (1988), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty And The Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994). He also served as the storyboard supervisor for The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James And The Giant Peach (1996).

     Ranft next moved to Pixar Animation to head up their story department, co-writing the stories for Toy Story (1995), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, and A Bug’s Life (1998), as well as contributing story material for Toy Story 2 (1999) and Monsters, Inc. (2001). He also contributed voices to numerous Pixar films including the voice of Heimlich the Caterpillar in A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2’s Wheezy the Penguin.  

     Ranft was working on Pixar’s next film Cars, due for release next summer, at the time of his death.