For other people with the same name see Chris Sanders (disambiguation).

Chris Sanders
Born	Christopher Michael Sanders March 12, 1962 (Age 47)
Occupation	Voice Actor, Animator, Screenwriter and Director

Christopher Michael "Chris" Sanders (born March 12, 1962) is an American film animator and voice actor best known for co-directing and co-writing the Disney animated feature Lilo & Stitch, and providing the voice of Experiment 626 from Lilo & Stitch and Leroy from Disney's Leroy & Stitch.

[edit] Life and career

A 1984 graduate of the California Institute of the Arts, Sanders began his career as a character designer for Muppet Babies. He also served as a storyboard artist, artistic director, and character designer on Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Mulan.

On December 16, 2006 several internet animation fan sites, including AnimatedNews.com, reported that Sanders had been removed as the director of the upcoming Disney animated film American Dog by John Lasseter. AnimatedNews.com and JimHillMedia.com (among others) speculated that Sanders was removed as director of American Dog allegedly because Lasseter thought Sanders's take on the film was "too quirky for its own good."^[1]After the departure of Sanders from Disney, directing duties were handed to Chris Williams, a Disney writer, and the film was retitled Bolt.

In March 2007, Variety reported that Chris Sanders had moved to DreamWorks and had then taken over as director on Crood Awakening, a project previously with Aardman Studios before their departure from Dreamworks.^[2] At the time, Chris had this to say about the move:

"I've been so anxious to start working on things, and so I talked to a lot of people...I like the way DreamWorks looks at animation. Animation still has a lot of different places to go, and I don't want to miss out on a chance to try some new things with it."

On September 24, 2008, Steward Street Blog reported that Sanders and Lilo & Stitch co-director and co-writer Dean DeBlois will be screenwriting and directing How to Train Your Dragon for DreamWorks Animation.^[3]

Chris Sanders also draws the popular webcomic Kiskaloo, but, since a post from Chris on September 30th, 2008 stating "I’ll be drawing and posting the new comic in a just a couple of days!", hasn't been drawn since.

In this year he confirmed that he will be voicing Stitch for the English version of Square Enix's new game Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Chris Sanders (director) at the Internet Movie Database
• Chris Sanders at DeviantArt
• Official Site
• Kiskaloo Web Comic

This article relating to an animator is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e

This biographical article related to cinema of the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e