Conrad Vernon

Conrad Vernon came up the way a lot of American animation directors do, through storyboards, and he has kept a hand in every department since. He is a director, producer, writer, storyboard artist and voice actor, and on the DreamWorks films that made his name he was frequently several of those at once. Born in Lubbock, Texas in 1968, he is best known for his work on the Shrek series, and for co-directing Monsters vs Aliens and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.

The voice work is the part audiences know without knowing. He is the Gingerbread Man, a supporting character in the first Shrek who was scaled up across the sequels until he was carrying his own subplots, and he was still playing him as Gingy in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, twenty-one years after the first film. He is also Mason the chimpanzee in the Madagascar films, a running joke delivered entirely through indignant silence and one word.

As a director he has a taste for tonal risk that is unusual inside big animation. Shrek 2 is the best-constructed film in that franchise, tighter and funnier than the original. Monsters vs Aliens is a straight genre pastiche with a real lead performance underneath. Sausage Party, co-directed for Sony, is a hard-R animated comedy that no major studio should plausibly have made. The Addams Family and its sequel, for MGM, moved him toward a more conventional family register, and he has since worked on Smurfs.