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.
Trousdale at the 2014 Annecy International Animated Film Festival
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the 1756 fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, while also containing ideas from the 1946 French film also of the same name directed by Jean Cocteau. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise and produced by Don Hahn, from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton.
Theatrical release poster by John Alvin
Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch.
A frame from the "Beauty and the Beast" ballroom dance sequence. The background was animated using computer generated imagery which, when the traditionally animated characters are composited against it using Pixar's CAPS system, gives the illusion of a dollying film camera.
