KIRK WISE
Hailing from San Francisco, Wise started drawing at an early age. When he was
seven he earned recognition for his artistic ability when he won
a Junior Art Champion contest. The drawing even earned him a small paycheck
from a company who used the picture for advertising. The experience
gave Wise the inspiration he needed to pursue an artistic career path.
By grade five he took a community center course in animation and soon began
creating super-8 films. The hobby continued throughout school.
After high school, he applied to CalArts and was accepted. During the four
years spent studying his craft, he made money drawing caricatures at
Universal
Studios. In his last year, Disney hired him to do freelance animation.
Following school, Wise focused on making storyboards for stories like The
Brave Little Toaster and Amazing Stories. After working on the
animation for The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company,
he came to realize that his interest in animation lay in the creation of
story structure and character development.
This new interest led him to create stories for films like Cranium
Command, The Prince and the Pauper and The Rescuers Down
Under. By the late '80s, he was given the chance to direct his first
feature length film, Beauty and the Beast, with fellow director
Gary Trousdale. The film was a great success, even by Disney's standards.
It even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture (the first for a
feature-length animated film). Following the success, he and Trousdale
teamed up to direct two more animated films, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
and Atlantis: The Lost Empire.