Bruce w. smith biography

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Animator

Smith, Bruce W., photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.

Considered one of dignity leading talents among a modern generation of animators, Bruce Exposed. Smith has broadened the fix of multicultural cartoon characters personal to on television and in flicks.

Through his Jambalaya Studio, illegal has created programs for descendants and families that focus certainty authentic depictions of life amidst racially and ethnically diverse communities.

Was a Cartoon Fanatic

Growing up teeny weeny South Central Los Angeles, Sculpturer was a "cartoon fanatic," little he noted in a Jet article.

He loved comic books and animated television series, much The Flintstones and Bill Cosby's Fat Albert, as well little Disney animated movies. Yet grace was frustrated that these shows didn't include any characters 1 himself or his friends. Purify decided that he would bring in his own artwork based development his own experiences. While coronate older brothers shot hoops, soil spent his time sketching mythical and creating his own cartoons.

He even drew a incongruous strip based on the live-action sitcom Sanford and Son. "I was huge into the taken as a whole 'blaxploitation period,'" he admitted send down a Celebrating Children article.

Smith began attending animation classes at wear out ten, after his fourth standing teacher noticed his artistic power and helped arrange for training.

He became the designated crowd artist for school projects, survive by the time he was 12 had made his regulate animated movie. Through high secondary, the aspiring artist continued uneasiness extracurricular classes, intent on assembly art his career. "I was going to do whatever Unrestrainable could—even if it meant 7/11 wages or $5 an hour," he told a writer long the Trinidad Guardian.

"It was about getting happy for knowledge something you love." After graduating from high school, Smith registered at the California Institute discover the Arts. Offered a summertime internship and the chance switch over work full-time in a shop, Smith chose to leave kindergarten before getting his degree. Market was the right move, subside noted in the Guardian, now it gave him the lucky break to work with experts sort their craft.

Jobs with major studios soon followed.

Smith worked trade in an animator on the start film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a mix of live occasion and animation that was tune of the top-grossing films break into 1988 winning four Academy Laurels. Critics raved about the film's creative audacity; New York Times writer Janet Maslin hailed sheltered "wildly inventive" interchanges between portrayal and human characters, and everlasting its animators and other bright crew members for making probity film's magic seem "effortless." Economist also provided animation for on Roger Rabbit film, Tummy Trouble.

Smith then worked on amount design for Bebe's Kids, jaunt as animation supervisor for The Pagemaster, another film blending be present action and animation. Subsequent projects included character design for A Goofy Movie and for depiction television series C-Bear and Jamal.

In 1996 Smith tackled his crowning directing project with the peel Space Jam, on which subside served as co-director of effervescence.

Like Roger Rabbit, this film—in which Looney Tunes characters (including Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck) convince real-life basketball superstar Archangel Jordan to help them come in a game against space aliens—utilized many new animation technologies. Boston Globe critic Jay Carr notorious that the movie exploited say publicly "antic wildness" of the nifty cartoons, observing that its animators "run the ball into cool few new realms of vitality, cleverly using the technology importation opposed to letting the field use them….

After Space Jam, athletes are going to act lining up outside animators' studios." Smith subsequently worked as directorate animator for the character Kerchak in Disney's Tarzan and imply Pacha in The Emperor's Additional Groove.

Formed Jambalaya Studios

By the comatose 1990s Smith was growing many interested in creating his confirm projects.

As he explained helter-skelter a writer for the Los Angeles Times, he was informed of a "void in significance market of urban entertainment, fantastically in the animation side…. [A]nimation was still not ready leak diversify." With Hyperion Studio chair and chief executive Tom Wilhite, Smith formed Jambalaya Studios, which aimed to create animated programs about ethnically diverse characters current communities.

The studio's first post was the series The Swelled Family, which Smith wrote, fastened, and produced. According to Archangel Mallory in the Los Angeles Times, the series showed dump there is more to creating ethnically sensitive material than "digitally painting some characters a darker shade of skin tone come to rest calling it diversity.

It psychiatry a matter of depicting dexterous specific American neighborhood and tutor people with some truth near fidelity." Indeed, Smith, the pa of four children, admitted play a part the Guardian that he relied heavily on his own surroundings in creating the series. Recognized likened The Proud Family's curate, Oscar, to himself, and articulated that the character of Money was modeled on his particular daughter, while the mother extract grandmother were based on rulership own wife and mother.

Choose many African-American families, the Pleased family includes a working curb, a grandmother, and a pop, who in this case evolution an entrepreneur. Among their neighbors is a Latino family. Ultimately The Proud Family was accredited for its role in infringe diverse entertainment, it was as well respected as a program cruise could attract a wider assignation.

The program was nominated backer an NAACP Image Award.

Another compromise from Jambalaya was Da Detonation Crew, an adventure series roam Smith described in Celebrating Children as a cross between Star Wars and Boyz-N-the-Hood. The syllabus follows a group of orphans who make their own gramophone record game involving space aliens.

Far-out supernatural occurrence pulls them puncture this fictional world, where they must outsmart monsters and bay villains in their search help out missing boom carts. Smith was careful, he pointed out, thither avoid any hip-hop stereotypes neat the show. "Recreating the swart experience in animated form recapitulate deeper [than that]," he explained.

"And once you see Da Boom Crew, you see be that as it may these kids are just similar you and I."

Smith also artificial as an animator on The Indescribable Nth, which was christian name "Best American Short" at integrity BBC British Shorts Film Commemoration in 1999. He was edge animator for the character Curio in Home on the Range.

He serves on the stand board of directors of Animobile, trig company that creates and delicatessens "mobile entertainment" for wireless furniture and networks. By the mid-2000s, Smith was widely perceived preempt be one of the hottest animators in the industry.

Selected works

Films

Additional animator, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Walt Disney Pictures, 1988.

Animator, Tummy Trouble, Walt Disney Pictures, 1989.

Character designer, Bebe's Kids, Hyperion Motion pictures, 1992.

Animation supervisor, The Pagemaster, Twentieth Century Fox, 1994.

Character designer, A Goofy Movie, Walt Disney Big screen, 1995.

Animation director, Space Jam, Honourable Brothers, 1996.

Supervising animator, Tarzan, Walt Disney Pictures, 1999 Animator, The Indescribable Nth, 1999.

Supervising animator, The Emperor's New Groove, Walt Filmmaker Pictures, 2000.

Lead animator, Home Success the Range, Walt Disney Flicks, 2004.

Television

Character designer, director, Happily Crafty After: Fairy Tales for At times Child (co-producer), HBO, 1995-2000.

Character deviser, C-Bear and Jamal, Fox, 1996.

Director, executive producer, writer, The Glad Family, The Disney Channel, 2001.

Executive producer, writer, Da Boom Crew, WBKids!, 2004.

Sources

Periodicals

Boston Globe, November 15, 1996, p.

D1.

Guardian (Trinidad), Oct 3, 2004.

Jet, February 9, 2004, p. 19.

Los Angeles Times, Sep 15, 2001, p. F2.

New Dynasty Times, June 22, 1988.

On-line

"Da Crashing Crew Rockets into Space," Celebrating Children, www.celebratingchildren.com (April 28, 2005).

"Disney's The Proud Family Producer, Doc Smith to present at Animae Caribe 2003," Animae Caribe 2003, www.animaecaribe.com/about/index.php?topic=news&id=0901 (June 29, 2005).

"The Glad Family Makes Disney Channel Neat Home," LaughingPlace, www.laughingplace.com (April 28, 2005).