Kyle Balda

Kyle Balda (born March 9, 1971) is an American animator and film director, best known for co-directing the Illumination films The Lorax (2012), with Chris Renaud; Minions (2015) and Despicable Me 3 (2017), with Pierre Coffin; and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), with Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val. He previously worked as an animator for Industrial Light & Magic before moving to Pixar, where he worked on three of their films.

Balda was born in Tucson, Arizona, to a Maltese mother. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1990s and dropped out after two years for a job he was offered.

During his time at CalArts, Balda was hired by LucasArts as an intern to create the animated opening credit sequence for the graphic adventure game Day of the Tentacle.

He started his career as an animator by working at Industrial Light & Magic, in films including The Mask as graphics animator, Jumanji as animation supervisor, and Mars Attacks! as character animator. He also worked at Weta Digital once in New Zealand, on the 1996 film The Frighteners, animating the character of the Grim Reaper for the film. Later Balda started working at Pixar, where he was credited as an additional animator in A Bug's Life, as directing animator in Toy Story 2, and as an animator in Monsters, Inc. In 2010, he joined Illumination Entertainment in Paris and worked on Despicable Me as the head of layout. Balda has also directed several short films and lectured at different animation schools.

In 2012, Balda made his directorial debut at Illumination as co-director of The Lorax, along with Chris Renaud. The film was released domestically on March 2, 2012, by Universal Pictures and grossed over $348 million with a budget of $70 million.

In 2015, Balda directed another Illumination animated film, Minions, this time alongside Pierre Coffin. The film was released domestically on July 10, 2015, by Universal and has grossed over $1.1 billion.

In 2017, Balda co-directed Despicable Me 3. In his role as co-director, he pushed for the film to have a more vibrant colour palette than its predecessors.

On June 7, 2024, it was announced Balda would make his live-action directorial debut with Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie, a film adaptation of Leonie Swann's book of the same name, set to be produced by Amazon MGM Studios.

Balda currently resides on the Oregon coast.

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