Chris Renaud (animator)

Chris Renaud is an American illustrator and filmmaker. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2006 animated short No Time for Nuts, which featured the character Scrat from the computer animated Ice Age films. His most notable work is the Despicable Me franchise, including Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2, which he codirected with Pierre Coffin. Along with Coffin, he also cocreated and lent his voice to The Minion characters.

Chris Renaud was born in 1966 in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania when he was 15, because his father worked for Bethlehem Steel and was transferred to their main office. Renaud has said he had mixed feelings with the move, saying it upset him but it was also one of the best things in his life because it showed him that there was a great, big world out there. He was the artist for the high school yearbooks and newspaper and had aspirations of creating comic books. He graduated Parkland High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1985 and attended Baum School of Art where he received a 1,000 scholarship.

Source: Wikipedia