Kathy Zielinski

Born: Kathy Zielinski
Birthday: March 21, 1961
Location: Torrance, CA, U.S.
Alma mater: California Institute of the Arts
Occupation: Animator
Years active: 1981-present

Kathy Zielinski’s enjoyed artwork as a child, but was deeply inspired by Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain sequence. She took her first animation class in high school and enrolled in Cal Arts’ animation program after graduation in 1979. She earned a Student Academy Award there for her short-film Guess Who’s For Dinner?

Zielinski was recruited to work at by Walt Disney Animation in 1981 after her second year at CalArts. Her first assignments at Disney began with Mickey’s Christmas Carol and The Black Cauldron. She worked on other films, often drawing assignments with dark themed characters like monsters and villains including Ursula in The Little Mermaid. She was promoted to work on Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the role of animation supervisor, becoming the second woman at the Disney to supervise an animation project. Frollo earned her an Annie Awards nomination for Best Individual Achievement: Animation.

In 1996, Kathy left Disney for DreamWorks, animating films like The Prince of Egypt, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron, and Kung Fu Panda before returning to Disney briefly in 2013 to work on the Oscar-Winning movie Frozen.

Fox Television hired her in 2017 for their long-running hit series The Simpsons.

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.