Eric Darnell is an American animator, director, writer, songwriter and occasional voice actor best known for co-directing Antz with Tim Johnson, as well as co-directing and co-writing Madagascar, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted with Tom McGrath. Darnell was born in Prairie Village, Kansas. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas, where he was a writer for the school newspaper the Harbinger. He studied broadcast journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. After graduating in 1983, he spent four years working on experimental films in his basement, which helped him get accepted into the Experimental Animation program study at the California Institute of the Arts. Meanwhile, he directed the music video for the 1989 R.E.M. song "Get Up". After graduating in 1991, Darnell joined Pacific Data Images, where he worked as a character animator on the 1991 Hanna-Barbera Halloween special The Last Halloween. He also animated and directed the short film Gas Planet, which won Ottawa International Animation Festival Special Jury Prize. In 1995, he left PDI to join DreamWorks and work on research and development for The Prince of Egypt. In 1996, when DreamWorks merged with PDI, he was assigned to direct his first feature film Antz. The film, released in 1998, marked the studio's first computer-animated feature film, and the second computer-animated feature film ever. He then worked as story artist on the 2001 film Shrek, for which he also wrote the song "Welcome to Duloc." Darnell and Tom McGrath directed Madagascar in 2005 and its sequel, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa in 2008. He was co-writer for the Christmas TV special, Merry Madagascar. Darnell also co-directed Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted with McGrath and Conrad Vernon, which was released on June 8, 2012. He co-directed, with Simon J. Smith, a Madagascar spin-off, titled Penguins of Madagascar and released on November 26, 2014.

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