Producers Jonas Rivera along with with Mark Nielsen and Gaylan Susman take home the Oscar for Best Animated film the the fourth and final Toy Story 4.
“We take great pride in that we get to make family films”, Rivera said in his acceptance speech. “Toy Story 4 is really a love letter to our families. This is for our wives, this is for our kids. We Love you!”
Born and raised in Castro Valley, California, as a boy Rivera dreamed of being an animator, but according to him, he could not draw: “I was a terrible artist, and I still am.” Today he takes home the ultimate honor for a producer for his work, along with his colleagues for their work as producer on Toy Story 4.
Rivera went on to graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in film production.
In 1994 he joined Pixar on Toy Story first as a production intern. “I saw Luxo Jr. in a class and liked it so much I cold-called Pixar.” He went on to work on almost every Pixar film, at first as a coordinator and manager. In 2009, as the producer of Up, he received a nomination for the an Academy Award for Best Picture. Rivera also produced Pete Docter’s Inside Out (2015), for which received the Best Animated Feature.
Rivera began collecting things used in the production since the making of the first Toy Story, a collection which would eventually be known as the Pixar Archives, now counting thousands of objects and stored in a climate-controlled building. He was inspired by Disney, which also saved objects from the studio productions.
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