James Wright

James Winston Wright (born on March 3, 1978) is a British-American writer, director and animator.

Early life
James Wright was born on March 3, 1978 in London, United Kingdom. From younger years, he was interested in cartoons and art, and started drawing as early as at 2 years old. After hearing about the CalArts Institute, Wright decided to move to California to study there, and the entire family moved to Santa-Clarita, California in 1990. There, he applied to CalArts in 1996, and later married his childhood sweetheart Hannah Flynn the same year.

Animation career
In 1998, he was employed on Nickelodeon, particularly on SpongeBob SquarePants, as an intern. He later quit the studio in 2010 to move to Adult Swim to work on his first original show, "Madical Treatment". After the show was finished, he came back to Nickelodeon in 2017 to work on "Gaming Gambit". During that time, he started slowly losing his trust in the network, and eventually parted ways with it on May 23, 2021, stating: "I never could have known that my once favorite network of all time would turn their cartoons into a money-making scheme, milking shows and creating useless spin-offs just for their own profit. I'm ashamed. They're doing on the same level as Disney or Cartoon Network. Ridiculous, truly."

His first shorts he did in his tenure in CalArts were The Gamers (1997), The First Day (2000), Love at First Sight (2002). He also helped his friend Jake Faber develop a short called Hippie War (1999). After graduating from CalArts, him and Faber founded their own animation studio, JWW Productions, on October 15, 2007.

Personal life
He lives in Santa-Clarita, California. He has a brother named Nick (born 1997), and a sister, Jessica (born 1987). He was married to Hannah Flynn until 2021, stating that "their marriage did not have the same spark like 10 years ago". They remained on good terms. They had three children, Lester (born 1997), Elizabeth (born 2000), and Steven (born 2006). Nick was named after Nickelodeon, which was his favorite channel at the time, and Steven is named after Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants.

He is a "radical atheist", despite being raised in a Catholic family, and was previously agnostic until 2007.

In 2021, he revealed that he has been suffering from depression for 5 years, and considered serious help after the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

He also owns two cats.

He's close friends with Stephen Hillenburg, Alex Hirsch, Justin Roiland, Dan Povenmire, Jhonen Vasquez, April Davis, John Trabbic, Brian Morante, Liliana Mumy and Alyson Stoner.