Oscar-Winning Pixar Animator Ralph Eggleston Dead at 56

Pixar animator Ralph Eggleston, best known as the director of the short film For the Birds, has passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56 years old. In addition to his Academy Award for For the Birds, Eggleston was an Annie Award winner as art director on the original Toy Story, and would go on to be an artist, animator, and art director on numerous Pixar films including Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Wall-E, and Inside Out. Before his time at Pixar, he was an art director for Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. His final credited work was on 2020’s Soul.

Eggleston was born in Louisiana in 1965. He would begin his career-defining relationship with Pixar in 1992, and had a hand in nearly every project at the animation studio from then until 2020. Prior his time with Disney and Pixar, Eggleston worked in TV, giving him an impressive resume that includes working on Garfield and The Pound Puppies in addition to his impressive work at Pixar.

“He was a unique talent and a beautiful soul,” said writer and director Roger Gould, who worked with Eggleston at Pixar. “We’re all better for having known him.”

“I think when you watch it, on your screen, you’re going to be kind of immersed in that color and the beauty of the environment,” Ferngully director Bill Kroyer told ComicBook.com last week. “It’s just really something that really pops out. It was something to see. And that’s of course, Ralph Eggleston our art director, who went on to do Toy Story and Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. He was the guy behind all that. And you can see a genius at work when you watch FernGully.”

Fellow Pixar animator Scott Morse took to social media to say that Eggleston was “One of the most honest, loving, genuine, and unique people I’ve ever met,” adding, “He always connected one-on-one with EVERYONE, always looked forward through a startling and uncanny knowledge of all that’s come before.”

After winning his first Annie Award for Best Individual Achievement: Production Design for Toy Story, Eggleston would score three more: Outstanding Production Design in an Animated Feature for Finding Nemo in 2004; Outstanding Achievement in Production Design in an Animated Feature Production for Inside Out in 2015; and the Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in 2016.

Our condolences go out to Mr. Eggleston’s family, friends, fans, and collaborators at this difficult time.

h/t Animation World Network

An early version of this story erroneously credited Eggleston with work on a number of pre-Pixar Disney projects. The claim was carried over from an outside source and not properly vetted before publication. We apologize for the error.