| Tom Sito | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 19, 1956 New York City |
| Occupation | Animator |
Tom Sito (born May 19, 1956) is a well-known American animator, animation historian and teacher. He has been called a "key figure in the Disney Renaissance",[1] and one of the One Hundred Most Important People in Animation.[2]
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Born and raised in New York City, Sito was introduced to animation while attending cartooning classes at the High School of Art and Design.[3] He continued his studies in animation at The School of Visual Arts with Howard Beckerman, cartooning under Harvey Kurtzman.[4] Sito graduated from SVA in 1977 with a BFA in Media Arts.[5] He also studied life drawing at The Art Students League of New York under Robert Beverly Hale.
Sito assisted retired Disney animator Shamus Culhane on one of his final projects, an education short entitled "Protection in the Nuclear Age"(1977). His first big break was when in 1976 he was hired by legendary animation director Richard Williams to work on his film Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure. There he met and worked with animation luminaries like Eric Goldberg, Art Babbitt,and John Canemaker. After several years doing commercial animation work in New York and Toronto, Sito relocated to Los Angeles and worked on TV projects like The Super Friends for Hanna & Barbera (1978), He Man and the Masters of the Universe[6] and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1983–1985).
Tom Sito was summoned by his old mentor Richard Williams once more in 1987, to animate on Disney/Amblin's Academy Award winning hit film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Returning to Los Angeles in 1988, Sito became a mainstay of the Disney Feature Animation division, contributing to the classic films The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast,[7] Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur.
Sito left the Disney studio in 1995 to help set up the animation unit of DreamWorks SKG, later DreamWorks Animation. He worked on the films ANTZ, The Prince of Egypt, Paulie: A Parrots' Tale and for a time was the storyboard director of the first Shrek film. He was President of the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonist's Local 839 (later renamed The Animation Guild, I.A.T.S.E. Local 839) from 1992 to 2001,[8] where he was awarded the title President Emeritus. He co-directed the animation for the Warner Bros 2001 movie Osmosis Jones, and contributed to other animated films such as Garfield (2005), the PBS TV series Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns (2008), and the 2006 Taiwanese short "Adventures in the NPM" which won first prize at the 2006 Tokyo Anime Festival.[9]
In 2009 Tom Sito was awarded the June Foray Award at ASIFA-Hollywood's Annie Awards for a lifetime of service to the animation community.[10]
In 2006 Tom Sito wrote "Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson" which has been hailed as a seminal work on the history of the labor movement in American animation. The London Review of Books said "Sito's book contains the best account yet of the 1941 Walt Disney Strike, with documentation from the union side".[11] Sito also contributed the animation chapter to Dr. Paul Buhle's anthology " Jews in American Popular Culture", and updated the classic animation how-to book " Timing for Animation" for Focal/Elsevier Press in 2009.
Tom Sito has lectured about animation around the world and has taught animation and animation history at UCLA Film School, The American Film Institute, Woodbury College, Santa Monica College. He is currently an instructor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.