Matthew Luhn

Matthew Luhn Profile

Matthew Luhn, Former Pixar Story Artist, is a writer, story consultant, creative writing instructor and keynote speaker with over 25 years’ experience creating stories and characters at Pixar Animation Studios, The Simpsons, and beyond.

With over 25 years of experience as a Pixar Storyteller, Matthew Luhn is a master at creating dynamic characters and compelling struggles that make audiences laugh, cry, and want more. His animation and story credits include some of the most universally beloved films of the past decades, including Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and UP. As a consultant, teacher, and speaker, Luhn takes his art beyond the film industry, helping businesses win by becoming better storytellers.

Luhn’s career path began unwittingly at age two when he drew a scribbly picture of his father, who was in bed that day with a stomachache. His father, who had wanted to be a Disney animator but was pressured into taking over the family business (a San Francisco toy store) decided that Matthew was destined to become an artist. Luhn’s father spent the rest of his son’s childhood drawing with him, taking him to art museums, and picking him up early from school twice a month for “a dentist appointment,” which was secretly a trip to the local movie theater’s matinee session.

While studying at the California Institute of the Arts, one of Luhn’s student films caught the attention of some producers and at age 19, he relocated to Los Angeles to take a job as an animator for The Simpsons. After working on the show’s third season, he returned to the Bay Area where he clinched a position as one of the first 12 animators at Pixar for their pioneer project, Toy Story. There, he spent extensive time with the film’s story team, and quickly realized that he, too, wanted to be a storyteller.

Due to problems with Toy Story‘s script, Luhn and the entire animation team were laid off. Luhn took it as an opportunity to learn more about the art of storytelling. A year later, when Toy Story‘s script was resolved and Pixar offered him his job back. Luhn declined, asking them for a position in the story department, but he was told he simply lacked the necessary experience.

He spent the next few years working on story freelancing jobs to build up his resume, periodically sending it to Pixar, but getting no response. Scraping by to pay the bills, Luhn often wondered if he’d made a mistake by turning down his old position; however, one day he finally received a call from Pixar offering him a job as a story artist on Toy Story 2. To date, he has created characters and story for ten of the studio’s films.

After working on several high-grossing projects at Pixar, Luhn realized that the company’s unprecedented success was not a fluke, but based on effective storytelling techniques that he had also seen used to sell products in his family’s toy store. Passionate about the art of storytelling, he decided to share his knowledge and tools with people outside his industry. Since then, he’s travelled the world helping employees at Fortune 500s and other organizations reconnect with their innate ability to tell a story. His clients include the BBC, Google, Facebook, Charles Schwab, Salesforce, Target, and many more.

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  Matthew Luhn, Former Pixar Story Artist, is a writer, story consultant, creative writing instructor and keynote speaker with over 25 years’ experience creating stories and characters at Pixar Animation Studios, The Simpsons, and beyond.

  Alongside his story work in Hollywood, Matthew also trains CEOs, marketing teams, directors and other professionals how to craft and tell stories for Fortune 500 companies, Academy Award winning movies and corporate brands.

  Matthew’s “Story Seminars” and “Story for Business Workshops” run in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and other major cities worldwide. His “Story for Business Workshops” and keynotes train business leaders and entrepreneurs how to use storytelling to bridge the gap between heart and business to build better brands and business communication, while his “Story Seminars” train attendees how to develop stories and write dialogue to create compelling stories and screenplays. His clients include Target, Procter and Gamble, Adidas, BMW, Sony, Mattel, Facebook, Charles Schwab, Microsoft, Warner Brothers, Google, Salesforce, and many more.

  Matthew’s story credits include Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), UP (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Monsters University (2013), Toy Story of Terror (2013), Toy Story That Time Forgot (2014), and other films and TV shows currently in development.

  Matthew’s career began at 19 years old, as the youngest animator to work on the TV series, The Simpsons. His TV credits on the The Simpsons include “Kamp Krusty” (1992), “Lisa’s Pony” (1992), “Homer Alone” (1992), “Colonel Homer” (1992), “Homer Defined” (1992), and “Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk” (1992).

  Along with his seminars and consulting work, Matthew has a sustained interest in teaching and empowering children around the world how to draw, write, and make films. Collaborating with The General Pencil Company, the first pencil factory in the USA, Luhn has created a series of “how to draw” books and art programs for kids of all ages.