Chris Buck Biography (2)
Born in Wichita, Kansas, Buck studied character animation for two years at CalArts before launching his career at Disney as an animator on the 1981 animated feature, The Fox and the Hound. Following that, he received an animation credit on a short film, Fun with Mr. Future and did some experimental work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
From 1984-92, Buck worked on a variety of freelance assignments, including several for Disney. Joining creative forces with fledgling director Tim Burton, he helped to storyboard Disney's live-action featurette, Frankenweenie. He went on to animate commercials (including the Keebler elves) for such Los Angeles-based production entities as Film Fair, Kurtz & Friends and Duck Soup. He also served as a directing animator (teamed again with Burton) on the Family Dog episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories and as director of the subsequent 13 half-hour episodes of the animated series.
Back at Disney, Buck helped design characters for the 1989 animated blockbuster, The Little Mermaid, and performed similar duties as well as experimental animation for the Studio's next animated offering, The Rescuers Down Under. This was followed by a stint at Hyperion Pictures, where he helped develop several films and served as a directing animator on the feature, Bebe's Kids.
In 1992, Buck returned to Walt Disney Feature Animation on a full-time basis to work as a supervising animator on the 1995 animated feature, Pocahontas. For that film, he oversaw the animation of three characters: Percy (Ratcliffe's pet pug), the mystical Grandmother Willow, and Ratcliffe's civil servant, Wiggins.
In addition to his impressive accomplishments as an artist and filmmaker, Buck also taught character animation classes at CalArts from 1988-93. He and his wife, Shelley, have three children.
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