Brenda Chapman

Brenda Chapman is an American animator and film director.

A native of the state of Illinois, Chapman's interest in animation as a teenager led her to study and then at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). During her summer breaks, she began her professional career working in syndicated television animation. After graduating with a BFA in Character Animation, she was a story trainee on Disney's successful animated film "The Little Mermaid". She was one of several key story artists on Disney's "Beauty and the Beast", where she worked closely with future Disney director Roger Allers to define many of the key sequences and motifs used in the film. She later served as head of story for the Disney animated feature film, "The Lion King", overseeing both the writers and the artists on the project. The Lion King is unique in Disney Animation history in that it is the only major animated feature produced by the studio that was not based on a previously extant story (i.e., it was conceived and developed entirely by the Disney Feature Animation team).

Chapman also worked in story and development for other Disney animated films such as "The Rescuers Down Under" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". She joined DreamWorks Animation at its inception in the fall of 1994, but is now working at Pixar where she is currently developing her second animated feature as a director. [ [http://www.screenwritingexpo.com/faculty.html Biography paragraph of Brenda Chapman from October 2006 Screen Writing Expo brochure] ]

Chapman is only the third woman ever to direct an animated film (Lotte Reiniger of "The Adventures of Prince Achmed", and Arna Selznick of "The Care Bears Movie", came before her). She is married to Disney director and animator Kevin Lima.

During her career, she also participated in the production of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (released by Disney through Touchstone Pictures), as well as DreamWorks' "Chicken Run". Chapman was one of a team of three directors who worked on 1998's "The Prince of Egypt", along with Steve Hickner and Simon Wells.

She is currently directing "The Bear and the Bow" for Pixar Animation Studios which will be released in Christmas 2011. [cite news
title = The Walt Disney Studios Rolls Out Slate of 10 New Animated Motion Pictures Through 2012
publisher = Walt Disney Company, via PRNewswire
date = 2008-04-08
url = http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-08-2008/0004789174&EDATE=
accessdate = 2008-04-08 ]

Filmography (as director)

*"The Prince of Egypt" (1998)
*"The Bear and the Bow" (2011)

References

* [http://www.filmbug.com/db/36972 Biography of Brenda Chapman] @ filmbug.com. Retrieved May 24, 2006.

External links

*imdb name|id=0152312