Robert Peterson (born January 18, 1961) is an American animator, director, screenwriter, storyboard supervisor and voice actor who works at Pixar. He was hired at Pixar by Roger Gould in 1994 as an animator for commercials, before subsequently becoming an animator on Toy Story (1995). He was the co-director and co-writer for Up (2009), in which he also voiced the characters Dug and Alpha. He helped work on part of The Good Dinosaur, before being cut from it. His work as a writer for the films Up and Finding Nemo (2003) earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He was also a co-writer on Cars 3 (2017) and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program for his work on Forky Asks A Question (2020).
He conceived Pixar's The Good Dinosaur (2015)[1] and directed the film until August 2013. Unfortunately, he had been dismissed from the project due to story problems. Peterson remains at Pixar, where he was developing another original feature film.[2] He created, wrote, and directed two short-form series: Forky Asks a Question (2019–20)[3][4] and Dug Days (2021–23).[5]
In August 2015, Peterson voiced a dog named Derby for an E:60 profile on ESPN that chronicled the Trenton Thunder's minor league baseball team's tradition of using bat dogs.[6]
