Byron P. Howard (born December 26, 1968)[1] is an American animator, character designer, story artist, film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known as the director of the Walt Disney Animation Studios films Bolt (2008), Tangled (2010), Zootopia (2016), and Encanto (2021). He is the first LGBT director to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature twice for his work on Zootopia and Encanto.
Howard began his career at Disney as a tour guide at Disney MGM Studios. Howard had dreamed of working for Disney, and had written to Master Animator Frank Thomas, one of Disney's Nine Old Men, as he was growing up. He soon began the Disney Studio Internship and was hired in 1994,[3] working as an animator on films including Pocahontas, Mulan, Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear.[4][5] He was nominated for a 2003 Annie Award for Character Animation for Brother Bear.[6]
The first film Howard directed was the animated Disney film Bolt, which was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.[7] In his role as co-director of the film with Chris Williams, Howard focused on character design and animation.[7] Howard went on to direct the animated Disney films Tangled (2010, co-directed with Nathan Greno) and Zootopia (2016, co-directed with Rich Moore).[8][9][10] He and Greno also co-directed and wrote the animated short Tangled Ever After, which features supporting characters from Tangled and showed in theaters before the 2012 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast.[11]
Following the making of Zootopia, Howard was one of the keynote speakers at the 2016 View Conference. He presented on the process behind the making of Zootopia and he taught the skills behind creating characters in a workshop entitled “The DNA of Disney Character Design.”[12] After his work on Zootopia, Howard worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda on Encanto.[13] Howard co-directed the film, alongside Zootopia co-director Jared Bush and Charise Castro Smith, while Miranda wrote songs for the project, which centered on a girl from a magical Colombian family who lacks magic herself.[14]
