Jill Culton

Jill Culton is an American animator, who is best known for her directorial debut on Sony's first animated film, Open Season, becoming the first female principal director of a big budget, computer-animated feature.

Previously, she studied at the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, where she later taught animation.

She was also a storyboard artist for various Pixar films such as Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life and also co-wrote the original treatment for Monsters, Inc., and continued to become the Head of Development.

She animated on Toy Story and served as a Directing Animator at Turner Features for the film Cats Don't Dance.

Along with Anthony Stacchi, she helped to develop Curious George while working at Industrial Light & Magic.

In 2003, Culton joined Sony Pictures Animation, which launched a year before to produce CG animated films. During her years at Sony, Culton, along with directing Open Season and executive producing Open Season 2, also developed Hotel Transylvania.

In 2008, Culton joined Starz Animation to direct Upside Mystery 2 for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Spyglass Entertainment.

As of 2010, Culton was at DreamWorks Animation. For some time, she was writing and directing an animated film about a little girl and a Yeti, tentatively titled Everest (now Abominable), but by 2016, she had left the project. However, she came back to the project to direct again.