Bruce W. Smith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bruce W. Smith is an African-American character animator, film director, and television producer, best known as the creator of Disney's The Proud Family.
One of the few Black animators working in the industry, Smith got his start as an assistant animator for Bill Melendez'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.
Joining Walt Disney Feature Animation in the late-1990s, Smith served as a supervising animator on three of its films: Tarzan, The Emperor's New Groove, and Home on the Range. In 2000, he piloted his series The Proud Family to Nickelodeon, who passed on it. The Disney Channel eventually picked the series up, which now airs on that channel, Toon Disney and ABC's ABC Kids programming block.
