William Joyce

William Joyce (born 1957) is an American author, illustrator and filmmaker whose picture books, including George Shrinks, Dinosaur Bob and A Day with Wilbur Robinson, have been adapted for film and television.

Joyce was born on 11 December 1957 in Shreveport, Louisiana, and studied at Southern Methodist University. His early picture books include George Shrinks (1985), Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo (1988), A Day with Wilbur Robinson (1990), Bently & Egg (1992), Santa Calls (1993) and The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs (1996). He also created the animated series Rolie Polie Olie, which earned him an Emmy. In film he contributed character concepts and art design to Toy Story (1995) and A Bug's Life (1998). A Day with Wilbur Robinson became Disney's Meet the Robinsons (2007), and The Leaf Men became Epic (2013). He co-founded Moonbot Studios in Shreveport in 2009. Its short The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, made with Brandon Oldenburg, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2012.

In 2011 Atheneum, a Simon & Schuster imprint, announced The Guardians of Childhood, a planned sequence of picture books and chapter books telling the histories of figures such as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman and the Easter Bunny. The first titles were the picture book The Man in the Moon and the chapter book Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King, co-written with Laura Geringer. The series was the basis of DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians (2012). Joyce was first attached to direct the film but left early in production and is credited as a writer and executive producer.

For collectors

Several of his books are the sources of well-known animated films, so the original editions of A Day with Wilbur Robinson, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs and the first Atheneum Guardians titles of 2011 tie directly to Meet the Robinsons, Epic and Rise of the Guardians.