Stewart Alexander Beaulieu (born February 15, 1978) is an American animator, filmmaker, actor, musician, songwriter, record producer, film editor, and video game designer. Beaulieu was born on February 15, 1978 in Union City, New Jersey to Matt and Helen Beaulieu. In his youth, his family would take trips to Europe, the United Kingdom, and Asia. The first computer Beaulieu owned was a Commodore VIC-20, which his parents bought for his twelfth birthday. He took his first interest in filmmaking at the age of 14, having created a number of short films on the Amiga 1000. As an adolescent, he was inspired by Japanese anime and began creating his own stop-motion animations using toys, as he could not afford the computers that would have enabled him to do them digitally.