An Evening with Tony Bancroft Recap: Making Art Breathe and Speak for the Glory of God
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On a Friday summer evening, nearly fifty individuals from all over the country had the opportunity to listen and ask questions to Tony Bancroft, a dear friend of Together LA’s director, Tommy Lee, and a world renown animator. With over 30 years in the animation industry, Tony Bancroft has been creatively involved in almost every facet of producing an animated film, video, commercial, or short film. He worked at studios including Sony Pictures, as the Animation Supervisor on Stuart Little 2, and Disney Feature Animation, where he spent 12 years creating and animating characters like Pumbaa, the lovable warthog in The Lion King; Kronk, the sidekick in The Emperor’s New Groove; Cogsworth the clock from Beauty and the Beast; and Lago the parrot in Aladdin. Also at Disney, Bancroft co-directed the animated feature Mulan. He left Disney to start his own animation studio producing a Christian animated series, Lenny and Sid. He currently hosts a popular podcast with his twin brother, who is also an animator, called the Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast (available on iTunes). He is also the author of the book Directing for Animation: Everything You Didn’t Learn in Art School (Focal Press, 2013). His newest animated movie, Animal Crackers, is now available on Netflix. Tony is now working with Warner Bros. leading and animating the Looney Tunes characters for Space Jam: A New Legacy.
The audience, which was a mix of Disney fans, film enthusiasts, story-tellers, animators, entrepreneurs and writers, asked their burning questions ranging from which characters Tony developed that he would want to do over, his favorite and challenging creations (hint: the former is a warthog and the latter is a famous basketball star featured in Netflix’s Space Jam: A New Legacy), how he handled situations when his work conflicted with his spiritual beliefs, how many animators it took to animate a production like Space Jam, his next project (a Wizard of Oz animated feature told from the perspective of Toto, the dog) and what skills the market demanded of new and upcoming animators (hint: check out episode 152 of The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcast, to hear the complete list of skills one needs to learn to become an animator at Disney or Pixar). When he was not answering questions, the audience watched in amazement as Tony shared his personal deck of storyboards and preliminary sketches or drew Bugs Bunny and Pumba in real time on a blank computer screen.
Enjoy below some of Tony Bancroft’s insights and stories:
When asked how Tony and his twin (Tom Bancroft) stewarded their artistic talents as Christ followers, he shared how watching Saturday morning cartoons and their “free-spirited upbringing” inspired their love for drawing. It was only later in life, when they attended church that they “[became] focused in using the passions of our hearts for His glory”. Their first job right out of college was at Disney, and the rest was history.
Tommy Lee then asked Tony what it meant to him to design characters for the glory of God. He responded with a fascinating observation: “Animation captures the imagination all over the world. It makes people think of magic and of higher powers…[so] characters can be used to drive interest into a lot of things. People will more often follow a character like Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty and Pumba the Warthog than an individual.” It was moving to see artistry as a vessel to inspire people of all ages and languages towards the goodness and beauty of the world.