Kyle Balda (Directing)

Kyle Balda (born March 9, 1971) is an American animator and film director, best known for co-directing the Illumination films The Lorax (2012), with Chris Renaud; Minions (2015) and Despicable Me 3 (2017), with Pierre Coffin; and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), with Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val. He previously worked as an animator for Industrial Light & Magic before moving to Pixar, where he worked on three of their films. Balda was born in Tucson, Arizona, to a Maltese mother. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1990s and dropped out after two years for a job he was offered. 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 films...Read More