in 2006, joel crawford joined dreamworks animation, where he served as a story artist on "shrek forever after", "rise of the guardians", the "kung fu panda" trilogy, the lego movie, and "bee movie". in october 2017, crawford signed on to direct ', replacing both kirk demicco and chris sanders as director. in november 2017, crawford directed "trolls holiday", a half-hour christmas-themed spinoff of the 2016 film "trolls". in march 2021, crawford replaced bob persichetti as director of the 2022 film '.