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‘Finding Nemo’ animator dies of cancer
The Associated Press
February 02, 2005
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Dan Lee, a lead animator at Pixar Animation Studios who contributed to some of the most successful animated films ever, has died. He was 35.
Lee died Jan. 15 at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley following a 17-month battle with lung cancer.
“Dan was a longtime member of our Pixar family,” said Andrew Stanton, the director of “Finding Nemo.” “He single-handedly designed Nemo and has been a major influence at Pixar. Dan was a wonderful, irreplaceable, talented human being, and we miss him terribly.”
Lee began working at Pixar in 1996 and worked as a sketch artist, character designer and animator for “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.” and “Finding Nemo.”
“He was a very talented guy. I don’t know if he knew how actually talented he was,” said Carmen Ngai, a technical director at Pixar. “He was extremely modest.”
Lee was born in Montreal and grew up in Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. He was the youngest of four children born to Chinese immigrants.
“He seemed to be just gifted,” Lee’s older sister, Sunny Lee-Fay, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “When he was a teenager, I used to say to him, ‘Why are you still watching cartoons?’”
Before working at Pixar, he worked on television cartoons and commercials for several studios, including Kennedy Cartoons in Toronto and Colossal Pictures in San Francisco.
Lee is survived by his mother and father, Kam-Sau and Hung-Yau Lee of Toronto; and sisters Sunny Lee-Fay of Vancouver, Mei Okurmura of Tustin, Calif., and Brenda Lee Truong of Toronto.
Last modified: February 2, 2005