1. Joseph Henry Ranft was an American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor.
14 Facts About Joe Ranft
2.
Joe Ranft worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation.
3.
Joe Ranft's younger brother Jerome Ranft is a sculptor who worked on several Pixar films.
4.
Joe Ranft received an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay nomination as one of the writers of Toy Story, and was the co-director on Cars, his final work before his death.
5.
Joseph Henry Joe Ranft was born in Pasadena, California, on March 13,1960, and raised in Whittier.
6.
In 1980, Joe Ranft joined Disney as a writer and storyboard artist.
7.
Joe Ranft worked on The Brave Little Toaster in 1987 for Hyperion Animation and James and the Giant Peach in 1996 for Allied Filmmakers.
8.
Joe Ranft reunited with Lasseter after joining Pixar in October 1992 as their head of story.
9.
Joe Ranft voiced characters in many of the films, including Heimlich the caterpillar in A Bug's Life, Wheezy the penguin in Toy Story 2, and Jacques the shrimp in Finding Nemo.
10.
Joe Ranft was given lead story credit on The Brave Little Toaster and voiced Elmo St Peters, the appliance salesman.
11.
Joe Ranft was posthumously honored in 2006 as a Disney Legend and in 2016 with the Winsor McCay Award, the lifetime achievement award for animators.
12.
Joe Ranft has been recognized by colleagues and in various tributes in animated films released after his death.
13.
Joe Ranft did early drawings for the character of Finn McMissile in an unused scene from the film Cars, and his drawings were later used in creating the character for Cars 2.
14.
John Lasseter has cited Joe Ranft as being one of the main inspirations for the character of Mater from the Cars films and described his influence as being "all over Cars 2".