Animator Biography

Pete Docter: Animator Biography

Pete Docter is an animator who is best known for his work at Pixar Studios. Docter was born on October 9, 1968 and grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota in a family very involved in music; however he never found himself interested in that field. Being very introverted and socially isolated growing up, he found himself keeping to himself quite a bit. At the age of eight he started to create his own flipbooks which gave him a passion to explore other types of media; this includes teaching himself cartooning and making homemade animated shorts with the family camera. He became very interested with animation, thinking it was a sort of way to play God by making up nearly living characters. He spent a year at the University of Minnesota studying philosophy and art but then transferred to the California Institute of the Arts. There he won a Student Academy Award for one of his films and graduated in 1990. Although he thought he would work for the Disney Corporation, Docter joined Pixar Studios as an animator the day after he graduated. He loved the tight-knit atmosphere there which made him sure that this was a good place to work. He quickly assumed many large responsibilities from John Lasseter including in writing, animation, sound recording and orchestra scoring. He has worked on many movies including Toy Story, Up, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., etc. He has been nominated for six Oscars. Docter’s inspirations include Walt Disney, Chuck Jones and Jack Davis. He also is a fan of anime, especially the work of Hayao Miyazaki and was even asked to direct the English translation to Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle. He continues to work at Pixar, to create more animated pictures and has a new movie Inside Out being released soon in which he directed.