Pete Oswald


Pete Oswald is a #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator and an Annie Award-nominated animation production designer best known for The Angry Birds Movie film series and Oscar Nominated ParaNorman, in addition to multiple animated studio films. He is also known for his work as a children's book author and illustrator, and painter. Pete's work includes the #1 New York Times bestselling picture book, The Good Egg, and the #2 New York Times bestselling picture book, The Bad Seed, both written by Jory John.

Early life and education

Oswald was raised in Bountiful, Utah. His mother, also an artist, encouraged him to begin painting and drawing from an early age. He attended Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City, Utah.
After graduating high school, he relocated to Los Angeles where he enrolled in Loyola Marymount University and earned a degree in animation arts. He then began working in Los Angeles in film and television animation.
He cites his artistic influences as Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Gustav Klimt, Miroslav Šašek, Charles and Ray Eames, Mary Blair, Ronald Searle, and Al Hirschfeld.

Career

Oswald has served in production design and the art department on multiple animated family studio films and television shows. He is best known for his work on the 2016 film The Angry Birds Movie, for which he transformed the characters, lighting, and set design from the popular mobile game into an animated feature film series over four years. He was noted for his work on The Angry Birds Movie in Vice's The Creator's Project, which stated: "Pete Oswald's fingerprints are all over the cutting edge of animated feature films, marked by a bright, colorful, slightly angular style." In 2016, he appeared at Comic-Con in San Diego, California. In 2017, he began working on The Angry Birds Movie 2.
He served as a visual artist on the popular animated films , Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, ParaNorman, Hotel Transylvania, and The Lego Ninjago Movie.
Oswald illustrated the children's book series Did You Know? by Simon & Schuster, and created and illustrated the children's books Mingo the Flamingo and The Bad Seed. The Bad Seed was described by The New York Times as "kid-book humor at its best, both warmhearted and frisky — the kind that leaves adults, too, cracking up and grateful".
He also paints with acrylics, in addition to his animation and illustration work, and debuted his painting series Pacific Abstract, inspired by the California coast, at a pop-up art gallery show at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California, in 2016.

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations