About Me

Upon graduating from CalArts, Geefwee Boedoe began his professional career in animation as a hand-drawn animator at Walt Disney Studios. Since then, Geefwee Boedoe has worked at Pixar, ILM, DreamWorks, Laika, and other studios. His character and environment designs for film have been published in many “Art of Books”, including Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, and Finding Nemo. The Opening Title Sequence to Monsters Inc., which received high critical acclaim, was conceived, storyboarded, and designed by Geefwee Boedoe, who also directed the animation. 

Arrowville, which he wrote and illustrated, was named a Ten Best Children's Illustrated Book by the New York Times Book Review, and also won the Best Illustrated Book award from the National Cartoonists Society. Geefwee Boedoe's independent short animated film Let's Pollute was nominated for an Academy Award (that's me, in GREEN, at the Oscar ceremony). 

Currently, he is developing  personal projects, but is available for freelance vis-dev and illustration. His specialty is thinking “outside the box,” and always seeks humor and unexpected concepts to transport ideas to a new realm.

Geefwee Boedoe is pronounced: 

Gee (as in "golly GEE whiz")+ Fwee (like "free" but with a lisp)

Boe-doe (rhymes with the famous extinct bird “dodo")

I grew up in the land of apples, Wenatchee, Washington – Apple Capital of the World (or so they say). The volcanic soil of the region, which I ate frequently as a child, was ideal for growing apples but had devastating consequences on my developing mind . . . After growing a "Handle-Bar Mustache on my Chin", and making a suction cup tie and shoes out of a bath mat, I decided it was time to study animation, so off I went to CalArts while continuing to design and sew my own fanciful clothes (early on my sister and mother helped with the tricky stitches). On a side note: reactions from my "fruity" attire ranged from delight to bewilderment, snickering to raging hostility.

I've worked in the Animation Industry for most all the big boys, and some little boys as well . . . doing animation, story, design (just about everything at one time or another), but I always continued personal work on the side – children's books, writing, music, painting, and sculpture. In 1995, I got myself hitched and moved to another fruit capital, San Francisco, to start a new life. With an eye skewed towards personal projects, I finally went independent in 2002. My first fruit from this path was "Arrowville," a children's book I wrote and illustrated, which won multiple awards, and a year or so after that, a selection of my drawings and paintings was exhibited at MOMA (in the Big Apple) as part of a Pixar Art Retrospective. 

In my free time, I enjoy composing songs and blasting loud, irritating sounds out of my cornet and trombone (did I mention I'm half deaf? It's true, but only from the belly button up – my feet hear as well as anybody's). I now sport a foot-long braided goatee and lament my pathetically boring wardrobe, as I no longer have the time to make my own clothes. I am currently developing multiple personal film projects and teaching at the California College of Arts despite my overall ne’er-do-well status. My wife and I live in the Bay Area and always cherish visits from our daughter, the apple of my eye.

(How many "fruit" references can you find above?)