Age: 68
male
Philip Bradley Bird (born September 24, 1957) is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. He has had a career spanning over four decades in both live-action and animation. Bird was born in Montana and grew up in Oregon. He developed an interest in the art of animation early on, and completed his first short subject by age 14. Bird sent the film to Walt Disney Productions, leading to an apprenticeship from the studio's Nine Old Men. He attended the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1970s, and worked for Disney shortly thereafter. In the 1980s, Bird worked in film development with various studios. He co-wrote Batteries Not Included (1987), and developed two episodes of Amazing Stories for Steven Spielberg, including its spin-off (based on a segment written by Bird for the show), the widely panned animated sitcom Family Dog. Afterwards, Bird joined the animated sitcom The Simpsons as creative consultant for eight seasons. He directed the animated film The Iron Giant (1999); though acclaimed, it was a box-office bomb. Bird moved to Pixar where he wrote and directed two successful animated films, The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007). They earned Bird two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature wins and Best Original Screenplay nominations. He transitioned to live-action filmmaking with similarly successful Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), he then directed Disney's Tomorrowland (2015). He returned to Pixar to develop Incredibles 2 (2018), which became the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time during its theatrical run, and earned him another nomination for the Academy Award. Bird has a reputation for supervising his projects to a high degree of detail. He advocates for creative freedom and the possibilities of animation, and has criticized its stereotype as children's entertainment, or classification as a genre, rather than an art. Description above from the Wikipedia article Brad Bird, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Brad Bird
Director, Screenwriter and Concept Artist
for Director, Screenwriter and Concept Artist in Brad Bird’s The Spirit (1984)
Suggested by captainwhaddock
In 1980, Brad Bird made a short test animation of Will Eisner's The Spirit to pitch to studios to make a fully animated adaptation of The Spirit. However, due to a lack of interest and the decline of animated movies in the 80s, studios weren't willing to fund an expensive, more adult-oriented animated movie with no guarantee of recouping their investment. Brad Bird would later go on to make movies like The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, which cemented his place in animation history. But if the Spirit had been made, then it could have changed the animated movie landscape forever. This was before stuff like Batman: The Animated Series, so having an animated movie in the classic noir comic vibe would have made a huge impact on animation.
