
Born: James Baxter
Birthday: May 1967
Location: Bristol, England, UK
Alma mater: West Surrey College of Arts & Design
Occupation: Animator
Years active: 1987–present
James Baxter experimented on short animation tests with an 8mm camera at age 16. After one year at Cambridge College of Arts & Technology’s art foundation course, James attended the West Surrey College of Arts & Design. He only studied animation at West Surrey for a year before leaving for London to be an in-betweener for Richard Williams on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? By the time the film was finished, Baxter was a full-fledged animator.
Baxter moved to Burbank, California in 1988 for employment at the Walt Disney Company. He contributed to The Little Mermaid and Rescuers Down Under. He animated Belle in Beauty and the Beast and worked on the Roger Rabbit short, Tummy Trouble.
He took a two-year hiatus from Disney to work on commercials at Passion Pictures back in London and then at San Francisco’s Colossal Pictures., When James returned to the Walt Disney Company in 1992 as a supervising animator for Rafiki in The Lion King, and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
James made the move to DreamWorks Animation in 1996 as an animation supervisor for Prince of Egypt, the lead character of Sinbad and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and The Road to El Dorado. He navigated the challenges of shifting from hand-drawn animation to computer animation for Shrek 2 and Madagascar.
Leaving DreamWorks in early 2005, James struck out on his own as an independent animator. He established his James Baxter Animation studio in Pasadena, California. James Baxter Animation produced several projects, including the hand drawn animation scenes for Enchanted in 2007 and the opening credits for DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda, earning an Annie Award for the latter.
James Baxter Animation closed its doors in 2008, and Baxter returned once more to DreamWorks Animation as a supervising animator, working on such projects as Monsters vs. Aliens, How to Train Your Dragon, the character of Valka in How Train Your Dragon 2, and became the head of character animation on The Croods.
In 2017, Baxter left DreamWorks to serve as the Director of Character Animation for Netflix.
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