Kyle Balda

Kyle Balda is an American animator and film director, best known for co-directing the animated films The Lorax (2012), with Chris Renaud, and Minions (2015), with Pierre Coffin. He has also worked as animator on several films including Jumanji, Toy Story 2, Computeropolis (and its sequel), and Despicable Me. He has worked for Pixar and Universal Feature Animation for years and is now with Illumination Entertainment.

Early life
Balda was born in Tucson, Arizona, to a Maltese mother. He graduated from 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 the films including 1994's The Mask as graphics animator, 1995's Jumanji as animation supervisor, and in 1996's Mars Attacks! as character animator. He also worked at Weta Digital once in New Zealand, on the 1996 film The Frighteners, he animated the Grim Reaper for the film. Later Balda started working at Pixar, and his works included 1998's A Bug's Life as an additional animator, 1999's Toy Story 2 as the directing animator, and 2001's Monsters, Inc. as animator.

In 2004, Balda moved to Universal Feature Animation, where he worked on several Universal animated films including 2004's Computeropolis as supervising animator, 2005's M.I.S.S.I.O.N. as layout supervisor, 2006's BJ and Wally as supervising animator, and 2007's Computeropolis 2 as supervising animator. In 2010, he joined Universal Animation's newly-formed sister company Illumination Entertainment in Paris, and worked in the 2010s Despicable Me as the head of layout. Balda has also directed several short films and lectured at different animation schools.

In 2012, Balda co-directed the Illumination animated film for his directorial debut The Lorax along with Chris Renaud, starring Danny DeVito, Zac Efron, Ed Helms, and Taylor Swift. 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, along with Pierre Coffin. The film's voice cast included Coffin, Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, and Michael Keaton. The film was released domestically on July 10, 2015 by Universal and has grossed over $1.1 billion.

Personal life
Balda is currently living in Paris.