Max Boas is currently working as a Production Designer at Paramount Animation on The Smurfs, which is scheduled to be released early 2025. Boas was the Production Designer for The Magician’s Elephant / Netflix 2023. He previously worked at Dreamworks Animation where he production designed Abominable (a co-production between Dreamworks Animation and Pearl Studios) which garnered nominations in 2019 for both the Art Directors Guild Award and Annie Award for best Production Design.
Boas began his career at DreamWorks Animation in 2003 as a Layout Artist and Background Painter on Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. He went on to work as a Visual Development Artist on Over the Hedge, where he helped design locations, create production illustrations and color keys for the lighting department and design a plethora of props found in the suburbia scenes. Boas has been a key Visual Development Artist and Art Director on numerous award winning films including Over the Hedge, Flushed Away, Kung Fu Panda, Rise of the Guardians, Kung Fu Panda 3 and the acclaimed finale to the Shrek franchise, Shrek Forever After.
Prior to joining DreamWorks Animation, Boas studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors distinction in 2002. Before the Art Center, Boas spent two years at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he studied illustration and general foundation in art. Boas graduated from Fairview High School in 1996 in his hometown Boulder, Colorado. He was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1978 and spent his first five years in New Orleans, Louisiana.