Tony West

Born: Anthony A. West
Birthday: October 5, 1965
Alma mater: Columbus College of Art and Design
Occupation: Animator, Producer
Years active: 1989–present

Tony West showed a talent for drawing and animation from an early age. He drew on the corners of phone books and his grandmother’s desktop calendar to create cartoon flipbooks when he was five. After a family trip to Walt Disney World he knew he wanted to be a Disney animator at seven. He took art classes throughout grade school and high school.

West was accepted into the Columbus College of Art and Design. While attending, Tony was offered an animation internship at the Disney MGM Studios; an intensive sixteen-week program designed to train artists in the Disney method of animation. Tony was the only one of his group that was asked to stay on.

Although trained in character animation, Tony was attracted to visual effects animation for the variety it offered. His first film credit at Disney was “Rescuers Down Under.” West also worked on classics like “Beauty and The Beast,” “Aladdin,” and “The Lion King.” He digitally modeled and animated dragons and rockets for “The Legend Of Mulan” and “Lilo and Stitch,” the latter of which he modeled and animated all the ray guns as well as the other elements.

When Disney’s Florida studio closed in the spring of 2004, West used to opportunity to produce his own independent film about the animation industry, “Dream On Silly Dreamer.”

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.