Michael Thurmeier is a Canadian film director and animator. He is best known for directing the

Blue Sky Studios Blue Sky Studios, Inc. was an American visual effects and computer animation animation studio, studio, which was active from 1987 to 2021. It was based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was founded on February 22, 1987, by Chris Wedge, Michael F ...

animated films '' Ice Age: Continental Drift'' (2012) and '' Ice Age: Collision Course'' (2016), which are the fourth and fifth installments in the ''

Ice Age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

'' franchise. Along with

Chris Renaud Chris Renaud (born December 1966) is an American filmmaker, designer, storyboard artist, and voice actor. He is best known for his work at Illumination (company), Illumination, including directing the company's animated films such as the Despica ...

, he received a nomination for the

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year ...

for the ''Ice Age'' short film ''

No Time for Nuts ''No Time for Nuts'' is a 2006 American animated short film from Blue Sky Studios, starring Scrat from ''Ice Age''. Directed by Chris Renaud and Mike Thurmeier, it was debuted on November 21, 2006, on the DVD and Blu-ray release of '' Ice Age: Th ...

'' (2006).

Early life and education

Thurmeier was born and raised in

Regina, Saskatchewan Regina ( ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2021 Canadian census, ...

, Canada, and went to Archbishop M.C. O'Neill High School. Although he enjoyed drawing for much of his early life, he was more interested in becoming a lawyer, but he changed his mind after seeing ''

Aladdin Aladdin ( ; , , ATU 561, 'Aladdin') is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with '' One Thousand and One Nights'' (often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights''), despite not being part of the original ...

'' in his last year of high school.

Career

After he joined

, Thurmeier served as an animator for ''

Fight Club ''Fight Club'' is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel ''Fight Club (novel), Fight Club'' by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays The Narrator (F ...

'' and ''

The Sopranos ''The Sopranos'' is an American Crime film#Crime drama, crime drama television series created by David Chase. The series follows Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey American Mafia, Mafia boss who suffers from panic attacks. He reluct ...

''. He later served as a supervising animator for ''

'', ''

Robots" \n\n\n\n\n\n\nrobots.txt is the filename used for implementing the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the website they are allowed to visit.\n\nThe sta ...

'', and '' Ice Age: The Meltdown''. His first directing job was in 2006, when he co-directed the short animated film ''

'', starring

Scrat Scrat is a fictional rodent in the Ice Age (franchise), ''Ice Age'' franchise and the mascot of the now-defunct animation company Blue Sky Studios. In the 2002 film ''Ice Age (2002 film), Ice Age'' plus its follow-up shorts and theatrical seque ...

for which he was nominated for an

. He was a co-director on '' Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs'' (2009), and made his feature directing debut with '' Ice Age: Continental Drift'' (2012). Thurmeier returned to direct '' Ice Age: Collision Course'' (2016).

Filmography

Feature films

Short films

Television

References

External links

* 1975 births Artists from Regina, Saskatchewan Blue Sky Studios people Canadian animated film directors Film directors from Saskatchewan Living people {{Canada-animator-stub