David Pruiksma

Born: David Pruiksma
Birthday: January 15, 1957
Location: Falls Church, VA, U.S.
Alma mater: California Institute of the Arts
Occupation: Animator, Director, Storyboard
Years active: 1981-2018

David Pruiksma was hired as an assistant animator at Disney in 1981, working on such films as The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid, and The Rescuers Down Under. Becoming a supervising animator, he created characters like Mrs. Potts and Chip in Beauty and the Beast, the Sultan in Aladdin, Pumbaa in The Lion King, Flit and other forest creatures in Pocahontas, Victor and Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Mrs. Wilhelmina Bertha Packard and Mister Fenton Q. Harcourt in Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

Dissatisfied with Disney’s corporate culture, David left in 2001. He worked as a freelance animation director and storyboard artist for Cartoon Network’s Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi series.

Additionally, he accepted a teaching position at the Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) from the animation department’s former chair Dave Kuhn, whom Pruiksma had known and trained at Disney. David remained at LCAD as a full-time faculty member until his retirement in 2018.

The Author

Lavalle Lee

Lavalle Lee has been creating animated cartoons online since 1999/2000 for his website flashcartoons.org. Many cartoons on the site have gained viral video status reaching millions of viewers online. In 2009, Lavalle started learning hand drawn animation from Don Bluth in his animation classes, as well as attending his Masterclasses in Arizona. He has also personally studied animation and visual effects from Veteran Disney animators in Orlando, FL.

Lavalle is widely known in the animation industry as the creator of the TraditionalAnimation.com website. After seeing that most animation sites were about all types of animation, not any specific to classical hand drawn animation, Lavalle knew Traditional Animation needed to be represented online. TraditionalAnimation.com has become the leading website and social media account for all things 2D. The website served as inspiration for “The Traditional Animation Show” in which Lavalle was both producer and host.

His partnership with Don Bluth began when he championed the Dragon's Lair Indiegogo campaign as lead project manager, editor, voice actor and in-betweener. The campaign reached $730,000 dollars to produce a 7-minute pitch video. In 2017, Lavalle brought the idea of creating a school to Don Bluth, and Don Bluth University was born. After a decade of learning from Don Bluth and working together on multiple pitches and business ventures, Lavalle accepted the position as Vice President of Don Bluth's new company Don Bluth Studios.