Mike Gabriel

Mike Gabriel
Background information
Born	Michael Richard Gabriel November 5, 1954 (age 63) Long Beach, California, USA
Nationality	American
Occupation	Animator, director, storyboard artist
Years active	1979–present

Michael Richard "Mike" Gabriel is an American animator and film director, best known for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios and as co-director of the Disney films The Rescuers Down Under (1990) and Pocahontas (1995). He was born in Long Beach, CA although he grew up in various small towns like Salina, Kansas while moving around due to his father's Air Force job.

Gabriel was very inspired with animation after watching Sleeping Beauty (1959) at the age of five. Soon after, he started drawing and practicing it for six hours every day to meet his goal as an Animation Director. It was in 1979 when he got his first chance to make his debut. Gabriel studied in the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts. He originally began his career helping animate on The Fox and the Hound (1981) and later went on to animate on the 1982 animated short Fun with Mr. Future. He was mentored under Eric Larson's training program, and went on to work on the The Black Cauldron (1985). He also served as an animator on The Great Mouse Detective (1986) and Oliver and Company (1988). Hendel Butoy joined Gabriel to direct The Rescuers Down Under, a sequel to the successful 1977 Disney film The Rescuers, while Eric Goldberg and Gabriel collaborated on Pocahontas. Goldberg and Gabriel later reunited with each other in Wreck-It Ralph to work on animating Sour Bill.

In 2004, Gabriel directed an animated short for Disney entitled Lorenzo, a hybrid of traditional and computer animation about a lazy cat who has a spell cast on his tail that forces it to tango with him. Lorenzo was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Animated Short. It was also included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2004.

Gabriel conceived, storyboarded, did all development pieces, directed, and art directed the opening Walt Disney Pictures castle logo sequence that has opened Disney movies since 2006.

Filmography

Year	Film	Position
1981	The Fox and the Hound	Animator (Uncredited)
1982	Fun with Mr. Future	Animator
1985	The Black Cauldron	Character Animator
1986	The Great Mouse Detective	Character Animator
1988	Oliver & Company	Story Character Designer Supervising Animator
1990	The Rescuers Down Under	Director
1995	Pocahontas	Director Based on an Idea by Visual Development
1998	Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World	Characters (Uncredited)
1999	Fantasia 2000	Yo-yo Tricks
2004	The Cat That Looked at a King	Character Designer
2004	Lorenzo	Director Story Production Designer
2008	Bolt	Additional Story Artist
2009	The Princess and the Frog	Additional Art Director
2011	Winnie the Pooh	Visual Development Artist
2012	Brave	Development Artist
2012	Wreck-It Ralph	Production Designer
2012	Frankenweenie	Art Department Illustrator: Los Angeles
2014	Big Hero 6	Departmental Leadership: Walt Disney Animation Studios
2016	Zootopia	Departmental Leadership: Walt Disney Animation Studios
2018	Gigantic	Production Designer

External links

• Mike Gabriel at the Internet Movie Database

References

• Mike Gabriel on Wikipedia

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia page Mike Gabriel. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. Text from Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.