Stephen Anderson

Birthday: June 5, 1970
Location: Atlanta, GA, U.S.
Nationality: American
Alma mater: California Institute of the Arts
Occupation: Animator, Storyboard, Writer, Director
Years active: 1988–present

Stephen Anderson was born in Atlanta, Georgia on the 5th of June, 1970, but lived all over USA due to his adopted father’s work. Stephen always loved to draw, and only saw G-rated movies (mostly Disney films) until the age of 7.

When he read Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnston’s Illusion of Life in 1981, he learned what an animator was and knew he wanted to become one. A couple of years later, Disney Studios conducted a promotional and recruiting tour of colleges across America with John Musker and Eric Larson. 13 year old Stephen convinced his father to take him to the nearby college for the tour. There, he met and showed drawings to Larson who was very encouraging.

After graduation from high school in 1988, Anderson moved from Dallas, Texas to Los Angeles to attend California Institute of the Arts’ Character Animation program. He returned home to Dallas for his Summer break where he got his first professional animation job; cel painting, inbetweening, and even a little animating in Dan Peeler’s home studio until the next semester began.

Two years later, Stephen earned a position at Hyperion Animation working as an assistant animator on Rover Dangerfield and then as a full animator for Bebe’s Kids. He helped develop other features by providing storyboards, concept drawings, and character designs. Eventually, he became the storyboard artist and director of USA Network’s The Itsy Bitsy Spider TV series, and for The Oz Kids direct-to-video series.

Walt Disney Feature Animation hired Anderson as a story artist in 1995 for work on Tarzan. He then moved up to story supervisor on both The Emperor’s New Groove and Brother Bear, earning an Annie Award nomination for his storyboarding for The Emperor’s New Groove.

Stephen made his directorial debut with Meet the Robinsons in 2007 followed by co-directing 2011’s Winnie the Pooh with Don Hall. Pooh gave Anderson and Hall Annie Award nominations for both writing and directing. When not directing, Stephen lent his storyboarding skills to Bolt, Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph, Zootopia, Moana, Frozen, and Frozen 2 for Disney Feature Animation.

The studio also granted him leeway to teach story development, screenwriting basics, story structure, and visual storytelling at CalArts from 2006-2016. Anderson has also been a guest lecturer on storyboarding and the creative process at San Jose State, Loyola Marymount University, Santa Barbara Community College, and the CTN Expo.

After moving over to Walt Disney Television Animation as a supervising director on season one of the Monsters at Work series, Anderson left the Walt Disney company after 26 years on June 28th, 2021 for Alcon Entertainment. He storyboarded Alcon’s Garfield feature film and was the animation director for Young Love in September 2023.

Animation Directory

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Animation Directory

Traditional Animation’s Animation Directory is an ever-growing and evolving record dedicated to preserving the memory of those artists, founders, pioneers, innovators, and renegades who developed this amazing medium.

It celebrates the artistic lineage of the mentor/student relationships in hand-drawn animation, and recognizes the legacy of animation styles, methods, and techniques as passed down through generations of animators.

The Animation Directory is a resource dedicated to the understanding the of traditional animation’s history as both an industry and an art form. The Directory provides a place for the reader to research the personalities who contributed to this most unique performing art.