Russ Edmonds

Born: Russell H. Edmonds
Birthday: October 11, 1961
Location: New York City, NY, U.S.
Alma mater: California Institute for the Arts
Occupation: Animator, Storyboard, Director, Producer
Years active: 1986–present

Russ Edmonds began as a self-taught artist working as an engineer at the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant. Ready for a change, he wrote Disney Feature Animation asking about work at the studio, and they suggested he look into the California Institute of the Arts.

Edmonds applied, was accepted, and studied CalArts’ Program in Character Animation. Shortly after graduation, he was working as an animator on Brad Bird’s “Family Dog” for Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories.”

Eventually hired at Disney Feature, Russ’ first assignment was animating Oliver and Dodger in “Oliver & Co.” The studio was so pleased with his work that Edmonds found himself working on more four-legged characters.

Over the course of 10 feature films at Disney, he served as a character animator, an animator, a supervising animator, a lead animator, and a final line animator, but was one of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ quadruped specialists. He supervised the sheepdog Max in “The Little Mermaid,” the lioness Sarabi in “Lion King,” the ape Kala in “Tarzan,” and an abundance of horses in “Home on the Range.”

Russ still have some opportunity to animate characters with less than four legs as seen in his work on Phoebus in “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and the Genie in “Aladdin.” Additionally, he used his talents on other films including “The Rescuers Down Under,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Atlantis,” “Winnie the Pooh,” and “The Princess and the Frog.”

Leaving Disney, Russ was employed at DreamWorks and other studios.

Along with his wife, Angela, He has also owned and operated his independent animation studio, Edmonds Studios, where he directed commercials and collaborated with other studios on various smaller projects.

Edmonds served as an animation instructor at CalArts and UCLA. He focuses his efforts on pre-production, working on storyboarding, character design, visual development, and story development.

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Lavalle Lee

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.

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