Born in Bologna, Carloni spent his childhood in Urbino, a walled city and World Heritage site southwest of Pesaro, known for its remarkable legacy of independent Renaissance culture and for being the birthplace of Renaissance master Raphael Santi.
Carloni entered the University of Milan as a literature major, but to earn money, he began selling drawings.
[3] For his work on Kung Fu Panda, he was nominated in the category Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production at the 36th Annie Awards.
[6] By early 2015, Carloni had joined Jennifer Yuh Nelson to help her co-directing Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), in order to meet its release dateline.
[3] In 2017, he was hired by Skydance Media to direct an animated film, titled Luck, but left the project in early 2020 over creative differences.
[9][10] In June 2023, Carloni was announced to be co-writing and co-directing Warner Bros. Pictures Animation's The Cat in the Hat alongside Erica Rivinoja.