Bruce W. Smith

Bruce Wayne Smith (born September 6, 1961) is an American television producer, animator, character designer and film director. He is best known as the creator of Disney Channel's The Proud Family (2001–2005) and Disney+'s The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder (2021–present). Employed by Walt Disney Animation Studios since 1996, Smith has served as the supervising animator for 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. He directed the 1992 animated film Bebe's Kids, which was met with critical and commercial failure.

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 attended the Character Animation program at California Institute of the Arts, and graduated in 1981. 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 1986, he served as an animator for Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, and joined the Walt Disney Studios as an animator for Who Framed Roger Rabbit,[10] as well as other Roger Rabbit shorts produced by the studio. In a 2022 retrospective interview, Smith said that the "big old tree Afro" with lips (when Eddie Valiant enters Toontown) is a caricature of himself that he drew while working on the film.[11]

He was an animator for the Back to Neverland short,[12] Michael & Mickey. He was credited on the 1990s Don Bluth films Rock-A-Doodle[13] and Rover Dangerfield—for which he served as a storyboard artist, character designer, character animator, and sequence director. In 1997, Smith served as a scenic artist for the film The Peacemaker[14] and was an animator for The Indescribable Nth and Garfield in the Rough. He also worked as a character designer for the Fox Kids musical comedy C-Bear and Jamal.

Also in the early 1990s, Smith was selected by produced Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang) to direct the Paramount Pictures animated film Bébé's Kids. Upon its release in 1999, the film was a box office bomb and saw mixed to negative reviews from critics.[15] In years that followed, he was credited as a character designer for Ted Turner's A Cool Like That Christmas,[16] The Pagemaster,[17][18][19] as well as the television series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child.[17][20][21]

Smith also served as co-director on the Warner Bros. live-action animated film Space Jam[22] [23] before returning to Disney as supervising animator on such films as Tarzan (Kerchak and Baboons)[15][24] and The Emperor's New Groove (Pacha).[25][26]

While working animation on the feature film side, Smith furthered his interest in television animation by creating The Proud Family for Disney Channel in 2001. Initially pitched to Nickelodeon in 1998, a pilot was created for the network and remains partial lost media.[27] He co-founded Jambalaya Studios, which worked in conjunction with Willard Carroll's Hyperion Pictures to produce the series, for which he worked on over 50 episodes as well as The Proud Family Movie (2005).[28][15][29]

The name of the series, the first venture for Jambalaya Studio, came from something he told his co-founder, Tom Wilhite when he showed him the show's main characters drawn as though they were in a family portrait.

In 2004, he served as a supervising animator for Disney's Home on the Range.[30][31] That same year, co-created and served as executive producer for the series Da Boom Crew for the The WB.[32] Smith later described the series as mixing concepts of Star Wars with Boyz-N-The Hood, and argued that the series tries to recreate the "black experience in animated form." Although 13 episodes were produced, only four of which aired; the series was a commercial failure.[33]

In 2009, Smith returned to the Walt Disney Animation Studios and Duncan Studio Production to supervise 2D animation on The Princess and the Frog—for the character Dr. Facilier—as well as the 2011 film Winnie the Pooh—for the characters Piglet, Kanga and Roo. In addition, he served as the lead animator for the animated short Tangled Ever After.[17][34][35] Smith's character design ability led him into visual development for the studio's subsequent projects, namely Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen.[17][36]

In 2015, he served as part of the senior creative team for the direct-to-TV film Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast.[37] In 2018, he served as an animator for Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.[38] In 2019, he directed the short film Hair Love, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.[39] In 2019, he worked on the traditionally-animated indie steampunk short series Hullabaloo.[40][41]

He returned to The Proud Family with the reboot The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, which began airing on Disney+ in February 2022.[42][43] This was spurred by the fact that on January 1, 2020, the original The Proud Family series began streaming on Disney+, and shortly thereafter, Disney executives approached Smith and Ralph Farquhar regarding a reviving of the series.[44] On February 27, 2020, the show was formally ordered on the streaming service.[45][46] Smith concurred with Farquhar, saying that the "show never really went away" and called it the "perfect time to bring back this show."[47] Smith also argued that the series is "blazing a path...[in] this animated sphere," saying it has parts of the horror, sci-fi, and Western genres. The show is rated TV-PG, making this the first Disney animated series to carry the rating.[48]

In December 2020, he and Farquhar signed an overall deal with Disney to further produce television properties.[36] On April 18, 2022, Disney+ renewed The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder for a second season.[49]