Kai Pannen was born 1961 in Moers, Germany. After studying painting in Cologne, he started his career at the beginning of the 1990s as an illustrator and animation filmmaker. Today he mainly works as a book illustrator and author and also as an animation filmmaker. Along with the film Tally ho, Pancake! he released a book with the German title Komm essen, Pfannkuchen! in 2009.