BIO

Stephen Anderson is a 30 year veteran of the animation industry, having been an animator, storyboard artist, writer and director for animated features and television series.

Stephen was accepted into the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts in 1988 and, after three years, was hired at Hyperion Animation where he worked on the feature films Rover Dangerfield and Bebe’s Kids as an animating assistant and an animator, respectively. At this studio, he also helped develop several other feature projects through storyboarding, concept drawings and character designs and eventually became a storyboard artist and director on The Itsy Bitsy Spider television series for the USA Network, and on the direct-to-video series The Oz Kids.

He joined the story department at Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1995 as a story artist on Tarzan. He was then promoted to story supervisor for the The Emperor’s New Groove and Brother Bear and received an Annie Award nomination for his storyboarding work on Groove. He made his feature film directing debut with Meet the Robinsons in 2007. A year later, he was offered the chance to bring Winnie the Pooh back to the big screen and directed the 2011 film Winnie the Pooh. Anderson, and his directing partner Don Hall, received Annie Award nominations for writing and directing. Disney Feature Animation is an intensely collaborative environment and, as a result, Stephen has helped out with storyboarding for Bolt, Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph, Zootopia, Moana, Frozen and Frozen 2.

Stephen was also an instructor at CalArts for approximately ten years. He taught story development for second year students and later, for third and fourth year students. His class covered the basics of storyboarding as well as lectures on screenwriting concepts, story structure and visual storytelling. He has also given lectures on storyboarding and the creative process at San Jose State, Loyola Marymount University, Santa Barbara Community College, the CTN Expo and Sheldon High School in Sacramento, California.

After developing several animated projects at Walt Disney Feature Animation, and an un-produced Peter Pan prequel for DisneyToon Studios, Stephen moved to Walt Disney Television Animation as a supervising director on Monsters at Work, a sequel series to the Pixar film Monsters Inc. This series debuted on Disney+ in July of 2021.