Joe Ranft, 45; Artist for Pixar Animated Films, Voice of Heimlich in ‘A Bug’s Life’
LA Times
Joe Ranft, one of the key creators of Pixar’s hit animated features and the voice of Heimlich the Bavarian caterpillar in “A Bug’s Life” (1998), was killed in an automobile accident Tuesday afternoon. He was 45.
A spokeswoman for the Mendocino County sheriff-coroner’s office confirmed that Ranft was killed when the car in which he was a passenger veered off the road while traveling north on Highway 1, plunging 130 feet over the side of the road and into the ocean.
Also killed was the driver, Elegba Earl, 32, of Los Angeles. Another passenger, Eric Frierson, 39, also of Los Angeles, was hospitalized with moderate injuries at Mendocino Coast District Hospital in Fort Bragg, according to the sheriff-coroner’s office.
Ranft was widely respected as one of the top story artists in the animation industry. He was one of seven writers nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay for 1995’s “Toy Story.”
But Ranft spent most of his time drawing storyboards for animated films.
“I don’t know if people really understand what I do,” he said in a 1998 interview with The Times. “When I say that I do story for animation, they say, ‘Oh, you’re a writer!’ If I tell them I’m kind of a writer, but I draw, they get this puzzled look. But when I say, `I’m the voice of Heimlich,’ the lightbulb goes on and they say, ‘Oh, great!’ ”
Telling stories in one form or another was Ranft’s lifelong passion. Born in Pasadena, he grew up in Whittier, where his early interests included movies, drawing, performing in school plays and doing sleight-of-hand magic.
“I liked evoking a response from an audience through the illusion of magic,” he said. “Animation is the ultimate illusion, the illusion of life: These characters don’t really exist; we create the illusion of a character.”
Ranft entered the character animation program at California Institute of the Arts in the fall of 1978. As a student, he was inspired by Bill Peet’s storyboards from the 1946 Disney feature “Song of the South.”
“His pastel drawings were so alive, they just knocked me over. Even though they were just still drawings, they screamed to be animated,” Ranft recalled. “I knew that’s what I wanted to try to accomplish.”
At Disney, Ranft worked on “Oliver & Company” (1988), “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “The Lion King” (1994) and “Fantasia/2000.” He oversaw the story on “The Rescuers Down Under” (1990) and was co-writer and supervising animator on “The Brave Little Toaster” (1987).
More recently, he served as executive producer on “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride,” due this fall.
