Randy Cartwright

Creator of Animation Timer, a stopwatch application for Apple iPhones, Cartwright is a veteran Disney animator and filmmaker.

Born in Virginia, Cartwright graduated from UCLA in 1974, where he made his student animated film, Room and Board, which won several awards and was included in the Fantastic Animation Festival. While going to school he worked at Disneyland in the character department and portrayed Dopey, Practical Pig, Prince John, Pluto, and many other characters during the three years he worked there.

In 1975 he was accepted into the Walt Disney Studios animation training program headed by the veteran Disney animator Eric Larson. Cartwright began his career as an inbetweener for Ollie Johnston on The Rescuers and progressed to full animator on Pete's Dragon. Ollie asked him to work with him on The Fox and the Hound in 1981. When Ollie retired to write the book The Illusion of Life with co-veteran animator Frank Thomas, he inherited Ollie's supervising animator assignments for the characters of Chief and the adult Copper.

After animating on Mickey's Christmas Carol and doing early experimental animation for Roger Rabbit, he received an offer to work for TMS in Japan training animators on Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. From there, Cartwright moved to Taiwan as a directing animator on The Brave Little Toaster. In 1986 he returned to Disney as the Artistic Lead for the Disney CAPS development team. He combined his knowledge of animation with an understanding of computers to help design and build the first fully digital animation production system.

He animated Belle in Beauty and the Beast and became the directing animator for the Magic Carpet in Aladdin. Cartwright went on to animate Zazu for The Lion King and moved into the story department for Hercules. He also headed up the story departments for the DreamWorks films Antz and Shrek.

He subsequently worked at Disney with John Musker and Ron Clements, storyboarding and animating on The Princess and the Frog. With his self-taught ability to program, Cartwright created Animation Timer, an animation timing application for owners of Apple iPhones and iPod Touches. He has been the recipient of an award at the UCLA 2010 Festival of New Creative Work, and has also been presented with an Academy Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animation at two separate festival events.