Bruce W. Smith
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.
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