Production Notes & Screen Credits - SYE Publicity

ABOUT THE
FILMMAKERS
Having worked for Marvel and DC Comics from
1994 to 2000, CHRIS
RENAUD (Directed by/Dave
the Minion) comes from a
background in comic art.
From there, he moved to
production design at Shadow
Projects and Big Big Productions,
where he oversaw all
aspects of the animation
process, including character
development, creating concept storyboards and managing
teams of digital modellers and artists.
He progressed to Blue Sky Studios/20 th Century
Fox Animation, where he worked as a story artist on a
number of feature animation projects, including
Robots, Ice Age: The Meltdown and Dr. Seuss’Horton
Hears a Who! His role was to translate the screen
story into the visual language of cinema, inventing
and staging both dramatic and comedic action.
In 2007, Renaud conceived, wrote and storyboarded
the animated short No Time for Nuts, overseeing
every creative aspect of production, including
design, layout, lighting, rendering, music composition
and sound design. No Time for Nuts was nominated
for an Academy Award ® , and it went on to win
the animation industry’s Annie Award for Best Short.
PIERRE COFFIN (Directed by/Minion Voices)
studied cinema at France’s
Sorbonne University between
1985 and 1988, and the
Gobelins school of animation
from 1990 to 1993. He then
moved to England and worked
as an assistant animator at Amblimation,
Steven Spielberg’s
animation studio.
In 1996, Coffin began
working at Ex Machina, one of the leading French
CG-animation companies at the time. While there,
he became lead animator, then animation director,
and directed his short film Pings (1997), which
captured the industry’s attention and started his long
career in commercials.
He then joined Passion Pictures as a director.
While there, he made highly praised and prizewinning
commercials, in addition to a miniseries
called Polar Bears (part of The Lenny Henry Show)
for BBC1. Coffin’s commercials and television series
shorts have been huge Internet successes. His Pat &
Stan pilot received more than 10 million hits in just a
few weeks.
In 2007, Coffin directed a seven-minute teaser for
his feature film Bones Story. The teaser, combined
with Coffin’s long career in animation, eventually got
Hollywood’s attention. By the end of 2008, Chris
Meledandri asked him to direct Despicable Me with
Chris Renaud.
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