Bill Perkins (production designer)

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For other people that share the same name, see Bill Perkins.

Bill Perkins (born 1954) is a Canadian animator and animation designer who has worked on such films as Heavy Metal, The Care Bears Movie, Balto, and The Iron Giant. He was born in in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. His family still lives in North Bay, including his nephew, Austin Mitchell, who is working toward becoming a CA.

Perkins studied character animation at the California Institute of the Arts in the early years of the now renowned Disney Character Animation program. He worked on some of the earliest Raccoons specials and 1981's Heavy Metal movie. He was a storyboard artist on the original Inspector Gadget television series, a story board artist as well as unit director for 1985's The Care Bears Movie; the following year, after having the same job for its sequel. He subsequently worked for Hanna Barbera productions as a supervising director on The Smurfs then transitioned into computer animation in 1990. Joining Softimage in 1993, he directed the construction of industry compliant interfaces in the emerging field of digital ink and paint technologies. He was a lead member of the team responsible for the first successful completion of an animated feature film (Balto) using commercally available software (Softimage Toonz) and a key figure in the effort to introduce and implement technology into the 2D animation production process during the years of the animation renisannce (1994-1999). He currently resides in Ottawa, Canada and is involved in the production of interactive DVDs based on children's books.