Bruce W. Smith

Bruce Wayne Smith (born September 6, 1961) is an American animator, character designer, film director and television producer. He is best known as the creator of Disney Channel's The Proud Family and The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, as well as the supervising animator of Kerchak and Baboons & Baby Baboon in Tarzan, Pacha in The Emperor's New Groove, Dr. Facilier in The Princess and the Frog and Piglet, Kanga and Roo in Winnie the Pooh. Biography Smith grew up in Los Angeles, California. At age 10, he made his first animated film based on designs of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Smith studied animation in the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts. He later stated that while at CalArts he became aware of the lack of Black characters in animated films which motivated him to create his own animated series. In 1984, he was the key assistant animator on a TV short of Garfield in the Rough. In the years that followed he would be a writer on episodes of the TV series ThunderCats. In 1987, he would be an animator for Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night. He joined the Walt Disney Studios as an animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit He also worked on various other Roger Rabbit shorts that the studio produced. In 2022, Smith said that the "big old tree Afro" with lips is a caricature of himself that he drew while working on the show.