Lipscomb’s animation director creates Pumbaa for Disney’s 100-year anniversary film

Tony Bancroft contributed to commemorative film airing on Oct. 15 on ABC’s 'The Wonderful World of Disney: Disney's 100th Anniversary Celebration'.

From staff reports | 10/02/2023

The Lipscomb community has another chance to see the work of one of its resident Disney animators on Oct. 15, on The Wonderful World of Disney: Disney's 100th Anniversary Celebration airing on ABC.

Pumbaa and Timon, animated by Tony Bancroft, director of Lipscomb’s animation program in the George Shinn College of Entertainment & the Arts, will be featured in the Once Upon a Studio, a seven-minute short film that Disney has created to celebrate 100 years of animation.

The project was like returning to an old friend for Bancroft, who animated Pumbaa in the original The Lion King.

Several of the supervising animators who worked on the original hand-drawn versions of beloved Disney characters were asked to create portions of the short film, which features a mix of computer and traditional animation to bring more than 500 Disney characters to life, popping out of their pictures on the wall of the Walt Disney Animation studios to hold an anniversary celebration.

“I was contacted by the two directors of the short film, then called “1923,” (the year of the start of animation at Walt Disney Studios) over a year ago to do a cameo moment in the short,” said Bancroft. "It was a real honor to be a part of the small team of animators chosen to return.”

Bancroft animated a shot of Pumbaa and Timon walking past an animator’s office and yelling to Olaf (from Frozen) to, “shake a leg and c’mon!” as Olaf is finishing up a drawing of the Genie from Aladdin, who comes to life off the page to deliver a funny line. 

“With so much going on, if you blink you will miss it! But that’s the animator’s life,” said Bancroft. “Because it was only one shot, I animated it alone but I did get a Lipscomb graduate student to help me shoot the scene that was animated completely on paper like the old-school days.”

The short is a tribute to the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney Studios Animation, which started in October of 1923 with the release of the first “Alice” cartoon called "Alice’s Wonderland” (not to be confused with Alice in Wonderland), said Bancroft.

Bancroft honed his animation and directing skills while working at Disney in California for 12 years. He has also shared his talents with Sony Pictures; his own animation company, Toonacious Family Entertainment; and currently, as an independent contractor working with Disney, Warner Brothers and others.

His most notable accomplishments include being the co-director of Walt Disney’s animated film Mulan, for which he received the Annie Award for Director of the Year from ASIFA-International, and animation supervisor of Sony’s Stuart Little 2, for which he received the Visual Effects Society’s top award for character animation.