Since making his release with 1999’s The Iron Giant, Brad Bird became one of the most respected and admired figures from the cartoon world - with his work on a set of well-known Pixar projects, 2004’s The Incredibles and 2007’s Ratatouille, getting him extremely near to household-name status.
Born to Animate:
Born in 1957 in Montana, Brad Bird has always had a interest for cartoon. He notoriously declared that he could someday become an animator for the Walt Disney Company while visiting their facilities at the age of 11, and only a couple of years later, the future filmmaker had finished a 15-minute, hand-drawn short - which he used to captivate the interest of several well-known Disney animators (among them one of the legendary Nine Old Men, Milt Kahl).
Brad’s Big Break:
After reducing his professional teeth for the 1980 television project Animalympics, Bird at last gained his place between Disney’s roster of behind-the-scenes talent and started work as an animator for their 1981 project The Fox and the Hound. His period with the legendary studio was short-lived, however, and Bird soon found himself looking for other possibilities in cartoon. He finally ended up in a popular show, working for Steven Spielberg at the anthology series Amazing Stories, where he developed a well-received tale revolving around the exploits of a quirky family dog (named, coincidentally enough, The Family Dog).
Brad Goes to Springfield:
It's about that period that Bird was asked to help change The Simpsons from a series of one-minute shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show in a full-fledged cartoon show, and the up-and-coming animator, who worked as an “executive consultant” to the show’s first 8 seasons, has also been tapped to direct a couple of episodes (including “Krusty Gets Busted,” which offers Kelsey Grammer’s debut as Sideshow Bob). Bird carried on to work steadily in the next several years, dealing with behind-the-scenes gigs at shows such as The Critic and King of the Hill, however it wouldn’t be long before he’d be dealing with his biggest challenge yet.
Brad Goes to the Films:
In 1999, Bird made his directorial debut with the well-received coming-of-age drama The Iron Giant. Though it wasn’t precisely a huge hit, the film quickly recognized Bird being a promising newcomer in the feature-length animation realm and it wasn’t long before different studios came calling. Bird eventually took his next idea, regarding a family with superpowers, to Pixar, where he went on to gain an Oscar for Best Animated Feature for his 2004 smash The Incredibles. The success of The Incredibles won Bird lots of good will inside the offices of Pixar, and in 2005 the filmmaker was asked to take over the creation of an in-development project named Ratatouille. The film, that was launched 2 yrs later, easily registered Pixar’s list of top-grossing earners, plus emerged victorious in the fight for Best Animated Feature against rivals Persepolis and Surf’s Up.
