Bruce Smith: Animator, Film Director, Television Producer

Posted on 10. Jun, 2010 by Leshell Hatley in Scholarly Celebrations

Animator Bruce Smith is the creator/executive producer of the Disney Channel’s hit cartoon series “The Proud Family,” one of the few animated sitcoms to feature Blacks as lead characters. He is a film director and television producer.

Having worked on the modern-day classic animations The Emperor’s New Groove, Tarzan and Space Jam, Smith, 42, is one of the leading artists in today’s animation community.

Education

He studied animation in the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts.

Career

A native of Los Angeles, Smith, married and the father of four, is cofounder of Jambalaya Studio, an animation company generating both racially and ethnically diverse projects for TV, movies and the Internet.

One of the few Black animators working in the industry, Smith got his start as an assistant animator for Bill Meléndez’s 1984 Garfield television special Garfield in the Rough. He went on to animate for Baer Animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and in 1992 directed his first feature, Bébé’s Kids. Other notable work for Smith during the mid-1990s included supervising the animation for The Pagemaster, serving as director and character designer for Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, designing the characters for A Goofy Movie and C-Bear and Jamal, and co-directing the animated segments of Space Jam. He was also was the creator of Da Boom Crew along with John P. White and Stiles White.

In 1998 he joined Walt Disney Feature Animation, Smith served as a supervising animator on four of its films: Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove, Home on the Range and The Princess and the Frog. In 2000 when he still worked for Hyperion Pictures, he piloted his series The Proud Family to Nickelodeon, who passed on it. The Disney Channel eventually picked the series up the following year and ran it until 2005. Reruns currently air on BET.

Smith says that after he was in the business for more than a decade, he was inspired to create the “Proud Family” because he did not see characters of color represented in animation.

“I was a cartoon fanatic when I was growing up, but there weren’t any characters out there like me. I decided I wanted to make cartoons that emulated my experiences with characters that I could relate to.”

“The Proud Family,” nominated for an NAACP Image Award, follows the teenage adventures of 14-year-old Penny Proud and her family, who together learn lessons about life.

Stars lending their voices to the cartoon characters include Kyla Pratt, Tommy Davidson, Paula Jai Parker, Jo Marie Payton, Tara Strong and Cedric the Entertainer, who won an Image Award last year for his guest appearance.

More Related posts:

1. Harold J. Haskins: True Servant to University Students, Groundbreaking Student Film Producer
2. Floyd Norman: Animator, Walt Disney Legend
3. Gordon Parks: Photographer, Musician, Poet, Novelist, Activist, Film Director
4. James McCune Smith: First African-American to earn a Medical Degree and run a Pharmacy in the US
5. Jacob Melvin: Technical Director for DreamWorks Animation SKG

Tags: 1984 Garfield, A Goofy Movie, Baer Animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Bébé's Kids, BET, Bill Meléndez', Bruce Smith, C-Bear and Jamal, California Institute of the Arts, Da Boom Crew, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, Hyperion Pictures, Jambalaya Studio, Jo Marie Payton, John P. White, Kyla Pratt, Paula Jai Parker, Space Jam, Stiles White, Tara Strong and Cedric the Entertainer, Tarzan, The Emperor's New Groove, The Pagemaster, The Princess and the Frog, The Proud Family, Tommy Davidson, Walt Disney Feature Animation