Nik Ranieri

Nik Ranieri was born August 23,1961 in Toronto, Canada and was trained in animation at Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada. After college, Nik worked in several commercial houses in Canada, later relocating to England, where he worked as a Journeyman Animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. That experience propelled him into his impressive career at the Walt Disney Animation Studios, which he officially joined in 1988. Nik has traveled a long creative road since his journeyman days, with similar Supervising Animator positions on eight other Disney titles: The Princess and the Frog (Charlotte), Meet the Robinsons (Lewis), Chicken Little (Buck Cluck), The Emperor's New Groove (Kuzko, Kuzko Llama), Hercules (Hades), Pocahontas (Meeko and Additional Story Writer), Beauty and the Beast (Lumiere) and The Rescuers Down Under (Wilbur). His animation skills have also been seen in Winnie The Pooh, Tangled, Treasure Planet, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. His animation of Hercules' Hades garnered him a second Annie Award for Best Character Animation and National Cartoonist Society's prize for feature animation. He won his first Annie for his animation of Meeko in Pocahontas. In 2013, Nik Left Disney animation and since then has worked on a number of independent projects and the long running television series "The Simpsons".