Ronnie del Carmen is a story artist and supervisor, character designer, and independent illustrator.
Biography
Del Carmen was born in the Philippines on December 31, 1959. He loved drawing at an early age. He also loved movies and hoped to work on movies or draw for a living. When he graduated high school, he was hired to work on a Vietnam movie, this film happened to be Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.
Del Carmen graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a degree in Fine Arts. When he was 29 years old, del Carmen left the Philippines to pursue his dream of working on films. He worked in various positions (story artist, story supervisor, character designer, illustrator) on several feature films at DreamWorks and Warner Bros., including Freakazoid!, Batman: The Animated Series, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. He received an Annie Award for Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production for his work on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron in 2002.
Del Carmen joined Pixar in early 2000 and worked extensively as story supervisor on Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo. After the huge success of Finding Nemo, del Carmen served as production designer on One Man Band before returning to storyboard artist on Ratatouille and WALL•E. For his work on the Oscar-winning WALL•E, del Carmen was nominated for another Annie Award for Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production.
Del Carmen took on story supervision duties on Pete Docter's Up, and directed the accompanying short Dug's Special Mission, which is included on the DVD and Blu-ray release.
Del Carmen has also been very active working in the book industry. He did The Batman Adventures Holiday Special with Bruce Timm, Paul Dini and others, garnering an Eisner Award Best Single Issue in 1995; Batman: Black & White Vol. 2 for DC in 2002; Dark Horse’s Aliens: Mondo Pest series.
Del Carmen also publishes his own stories in his Paper Biscuit books featuring Nina, a dream-walking adventurer and social misfit. Del Carmen is also very active online with his own blog.
Personal Life
Del Carmen is married and has two kids.
Filmography
- Finding Nemo (2003): story supervisor
- One Man Band (2005): production designer
- Ratatouille (2007): story artist
- WALL-E (2008) story artist
- Up (2009): story supervisor
- Dug's Special Mission (2009): director
- Brave (2012): additional story artist
- Monsters University (2013): additional story artist
- Inside Out (2015): co-director
- Finding Dory (2016): Pixar studio team: development
- Coco (2017): story artist
- Soul (2020): voice of Windstar, additional story contribution
- Elemental (2023): voice of Bernie
- Inside Out 2 (2024): key creative, additional screenplay material
Trivia
- Del Carmen's work is featured in many of the Art of Books including The Art of Finding Nemo, The Art of WALL•E, The Art of Pixar Short Films and The Art of Up.
- In Cars 2, there is a minor character named Ronnie Del Cooper, which is most likely a reference to Ronnie Del Carmen. A die-cast of Ronnie was released.