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. Early life 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. Career 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 animator in Monsters, Inc.. In 2010, he joined Illumination Entertainment in Paris, and worked in Despicable Me as the head of layout. Balda has also directed several short films and lectured at different animation schools.