Byron Howard

Byron P. Howard (born December 26, 1968) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, story artist and occasional voice actor at Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is best known as the co-director of Bolt (2008), Tangled (2010), and Zootopia (2016), and a supervising animator on Lilo & Stitch (2002) and Brother Bear (2003). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Tangled and won for Zootopia.

Early life and education
Howard was born in Misawa, Japan, and raised in Issaquah, Washington, United States. He attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

Career
Howard began his career at Disney in 1994, working as an animator on films including Pocahontas, Mulan, Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear. He was nominated for a 2003 Annie Award for Character Animation for Brother Bear.

The first film Howard directed was the animated Disney film Bolt, which was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In his role as co-director of the film with Chris Williams, Howard focused on character design and animation. Howard went on to direct the animated Disney films Tangled (2010, co-directed with Nathan Greno) and Zootopia (2016, co-directed with Rich Moore). He and Greno also co-directed and wrote the animated short Tangled Ever After, which features supporting characters from Tangled and showed in theaters before the 2012 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast.

As of November 2016, Howard is working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on an original animated film.

In 2009, Howard became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Personal life
In the Fusion documentary Imagining Zootopia, Howard mentioned he is gay and has been married since 1988.