RALPH GUGGENHEIM (Producer), vice president of feature production at Pixar, serves as one of the two producers of "Toy Story." He has been Pixar's director of animation production since 1985 and, during his tenure, has produced the animated films "Red's Dream," "Tin Toy" and "Knickknack." In 1989, "Tin Toy" won the Academy Award for "Best Animated Short Film."
Guggenheim was born and raised in New Rochelle, New York, where he first made films with high school friends in his spare time. At Carnegie Mellon University, faced with the "dire consequence" of being listed as an undergraduate English major, he used his interest in filmmaking as a means of pursuing non-traditional studies, and became a Communications major with an emphasis in film and television. This led him to a variety of opportunities including teaching filmmaking to local teenagers, editing news film for Pittsburgh television stations, and being a "one-man band" freelance filmmaker -- directing, shooting and editing industrial and educational films. It also introduced Guggenheim to animation. He sought out the computer science department at the university after reading about computer animation as a new filmmaking technique.
"Like many in this field of computer animation, I can recall a particular moment of revelation when, in 1973, I saw computer generated images on a computer screen," says Guggenheim. This new-found interest led to studies in computer science. He went on to receive his B.A. in communications and his M.S. in computer graphics and film production from Carnegie Mellon.
At the Computer Graphics Lab of The New York Institute of Technology in 1978, Guggenheim met and began his association with Ed Catmull and the future Pixar team. He recalls, "Even then, we all discussed the notion that someday we'd be making full-length films with this technique. It became something of a quest for us." Two years later, he joined Lucasfilm's Computer Research Group as director of editing research. He also served as lead designer of one of the first commercial non-linear editing systems, introduced in 1984 as Lucasfilm's EditDroid.
In 1985, Guggenheim returned to his interest in computer animation and joined the team of John Lasseter and William Reeves, who went on to produce Pixar's short films. From 1989-93, Guggenheim was the Executive Producer of Pixar's television commercial work, which resulted in two consecutive Gold Clios for Achievement in Computer Graphics in as many years.
Guggenheim and his wife, Marsha, have two children. They live in Northern California.
