John Donkin received an Academy Award nomination in 2003 as producer of Gone Nutty, an animated short created at Blue Sky Studios featuring the popular character Scrat from the “Ice Age” films. Donkin joined Blue Sky Studios in 1998 as a technical and administrative director. One of his first projects was helping to complete the Oscar-winning short film Bunny. He developed the production line for Blue Sky's first feature-length animated film project, Ice Age, before becoming an associate producer on the film. Donkin went on to produce several other Blue Sky Studios projects, including Rio and Rio 2, which became a globally successful franchise, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which grossed over $887 million worldwide, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Robots, and the Oscar-nominated short Blue Sky No Time for Nuts. Donkin began his career in computer animation in 1983, where he studied with the world-renowned CGRG (Computer Graphics Research Group) at Ohio State University. He went on to become a senior animator at the pioneering computer graphics company Cranston/Csuri Productions.