Kathy Zielinski (born March 21, 1961) [1] is an American character animator. She was recruited by Walt Disney Animation in 1981 [2] after finishing her time in the Cal Arts animation program. [3] Her beginnings at Disney started with working on Mickey's Christmas Carol and The Black Cauldron. [2] After working on a series of other projects, including Ursula in The Little Mermaid, [4] she progressed into the role of animation supervisor, working on Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. [3] [5]
Afterward, she moved to DreamWorks and began working with them on projects in the early 2000s. [2] Zielinski has since moved to working on television series as a Character Animator with Encore on a series of super-hero shows [1] [2] [6] and, currently, with Fox Television [6] on the hit animated series The Simpsons. [1] [2]
She won the California Institute of Arts Student Academy Award in Animation in 1982 and was nominated for Best Individual Achievement: Animation at the 1996 Annie Awards. [7] Zielinski has also played a part in the animation of multiple award-winning productions, including Academy Award winners [8] [9] [10] and nominees. [11] [12] [13]
Zielinski's early inspirations for her style and themes as an artist came from media with dark themes, focusing on the designs and characters of monsters and villains. Her first inspiration came from the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequences in Fantasia. [4] Having practiced artwork as a hobby, Zielinski took her first animation class in high school, where she was encouraged to continue into the Cal Arts animation program. She began her college education at Cal Arts in the Fall of 1979. [14]
During her two years at the animation program in Cal Arts, she won the Student Academy Award at the school for her short-film project "Guess Who's For Dinner?" [2] After her second year, she was recruited to work at Disney, where she later became the second woman at the company to supervise an animation project. She was initially slated to be the first, but at the time had left the studio and the role of supervising animation of LeFou in Beauty and the Beast and that barrier-breaking appointment instead went to Ellen Woodbury. [15] After returning, Zielinski later took a role as the second woman to supervise animation at Disney with her work on Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. [15] This work earned her a nomination for the Best Individual Achievement: Animation at the 1996 Annie Awards. [7]
Kathy Zielinski is responsible for returning darker styles of animation to the Disney portfolio. [15] In both theme and art style technique, Zielinski favors a style of animation closely resembling the Danse Macabre genre. [16] This style of animation was first introduced into this form of media in 1922 with the experimental silent film Danse Macabre at the Rialto Theatre in New York City. [17] Due to their technical similarities, the techniques used in animation and film making, as well as acting, are often interchangeable, [18] [19] and much of the early influence from this Danse Macabre generation has been re-emphasised in Kathy's work.
As the industry changed and it began to become less common to stay in the same studio for prolonged periods, [14] Zielinski left Disney to work for DreamWorks in 1996. [6] With DreamWorks, she worked on a lot of hit animated movies until she left in 2013. [6] In 2013, she returned to Disney for a short time to work on the Oscar-Winning movie Frozen. [20] [2] She then started working with Encore on their set of DC comic based live-action television shows such as The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow in 2015. [2] [6] Currently, she works with Fox on the long-running series "The Simpsons". [1] [6]
Year | Title | Credits | Characters |
---|---|---|---|
1985 | The Black Cauldron | additional animator | |
1986 | The Great Mouse Detective | animator | |
1988 | Oliver & Company | animator | |
1989 | The Little Mermaid | animator | Ursula |
1990 | The Rescuers Down Under | supervising animator | Frank |
1992 | FernGully: The Last Rainforest | character designer | |
Aladdin | animator | Jafar as beggar and snake | |
1996 | The Hunchback of Notre Dame | supervising animator | Claude Frollo |
1998 | The Prince of Egypt | additional animator | |
2000 | The Road to El Dorado | supervising animator | Tzekel-Kan |
2002 | Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron | animator | Spirit |
2003 | Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas | animator | Marina |
2004 | Shark Tale | animator | |
2006 | Over the Hedge | animator | |
Hammy's Boomerang Adventure | animator | ||
Flushed Away | animator | ||
2007 | Bee Movie | additional animator | |
2008 | Kung Fu Panda | animator | |
2009 | Monsters vs. Aliens | animator | |
2011 | Kung Fu Panda 2 | animator | |
2012 | Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted | animator | |
2014 | The Book of Life | additional animator |
Year | Title | Credits |
---|---|---|
2017-present | The Simpsons | character layout lead character layout assistant director |
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. The title refers to the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which features prominently throughout the novel. It focuses on the unfortunate story of Quasimodo, the Roma street dancer Esmeralda and Quasimodo's guardian the Archdeacon Claude Frollo in 15th-century Paris. All its elements—the Renaissance setting, impossible love affairs and marginalized characters—make the work a model of the literary themes of Romanticism.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated musical drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is loosely based on the 1831 novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise and produced by Don Hahn, from a screenplay written by Tab Murphy, Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and the writing team of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White. Featuring the voices of Tom Hulce, Demi Moore, Tony Jay, and Kevin Kline, the film follows Quasimodo, the deformed and confined bell-ringer of Notre Dame, and his yearning to explore the outside world and be accepted by society, against the wishes of his cruel, puritanical foster father Claude Frollo, who also wants to exterminate Paris' Roma population.
Quasimodo is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster, but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death.
Claude Frollo is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. He is an alchemist and intellectual, as well as a Catholic clergyman.
Gary Trousdale is an American animator, film director, screenwriter and storyboard artist. He is best known for directing films such as Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). He frequently works with Kirk Wise and Don Hahn.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame II is a 2002 American animated musical film directed by Bradley Raymond. It is a direct-to-video sequel to Disney's 1996 animated feature film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The film was produced by the Japanese office of Walt Disney Animation and Walt Disney Television Animation, while it was distributed by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. Much of the actors from the original film reprise their roles, with the addition of new characters played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, Michael McKean and Haley Joel Osment. Critical reception was mostly negative.
James Baxter is a British character animator. He was first known for his work on several Walt Disney Animation Studios films, including various characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Rafiki in The Lion King, and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Russell H. "Russ" Edmonds is an American Disney animator who has worked as a character animator, an animator, a supervising animator, a lead animator and a final line animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios. He worked on several Disney feature films, including Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Home on the Range, The Princess and the Frog, and Winnie the Pooh. He studied at the Program in Character Animation at the California Institute of the Arts. Along with his wife, Angela, Edmonds owns and directs the Edmonds Studios, an independent animation production studio in Red Bluff, California.
Hellfire is a song from Disney's 1996 animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The song is sung by the film's main antagonist, Judge Claude Frollo, who is voiced by Tony Jay.
Esmeralda, born Agnès, is a fictional character in Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. She is a French Roma girl. She constantly attracts men with her seductive dances, and is rarely seen without her clever goat Djali. She is around 16 years old and has a kind and generous heart.
Kirk Wise is an American film director, animator and screenwriter best known for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Wise has directed Disney animated films such as Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. He also directed the English-language translation of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. He frequently works with Gary Trousdale and Don Hahn.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Adapted from 1996 Disney animated film of the same name, which in turn was based on the 1831 novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. The musical premiered in 1999 in Berlin as Der Glöckner von Notre Dame, with a book by James Lapine. It was produced by Disney Theatrical Productions, being the company's first musical to premiere outside the United States. It ran for three years, becoming one of Berlin's longest-running musicals.
Judge Claude Frollo is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Disney's 34th animated film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). He was based on Archdeacon Claude Frollo from Victor Hugo's 1831 novel.
Tony Bancroft is an American animator and film director who frequently collaborates with Disney. He is the founder and owner of the faith-driven animation company Toonacious Family Entertainment. Tony is the Executive VP Creative Development and Production for DivideNine Animation Studios.
The Hunchback is a 1997 made-for-television romantic drama film based on Victor Hugo's iconic 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, directed by Peter Medak and produced by Stephane Reichel. It stars Richard Harris as Claude Frollo, Salma Hayek as Esmeralda and Mandy Patinkin as Quasimodo, the titular hunchback of Notre Dame.
The Disney Renaissance was a period from 1989 to 1999 during which Walt Disney Feature Animation returned to producing critically and commercially successful animated films. These were mostly musical adaptations of well-known stories, similar to the films produced during the era of Walt Disney from the 1930s to 1960s. The resurgence allowed Disney's animated films to become a powerhouse of successes at the domestic and foreign box office, earning much greater profits than most of the Disney films of previous eras.
"The Bells of Notre Dame" is a song from the 1996 Disney film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, composed by Alan Menken, with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. It is sung at the beginning of the film by the clown-like gypsy, Clopin. It is set mainly in the key of D minor. The lyrics of the song bear some similarity to the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, especially the repetition of the word "bells" during the crescendo. The song is reprised at the end of the film.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a Disney media franchise, commencing in 1996 with the release of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The franchise is based on the 1831 novel of the same name by Victor Hugo.
Dominique Monféry is a French director, storyboard artist, and animator.
Sergio Pablos is a Spanish animator, director and screenwriter. While at the helm of his company, Pablos developed several concepts for animated feature films, most notably the original ideas upon which Despicable Me and Smallfoot were based.