Tom Bancroft has over 30 years of experience in the animation industry, most of which was for Walt Disney Feature animation where he was an animator for 12 years on films like: “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin”, “Pocahontas”, “Mulan”, “Tarzan” and “Brother Bear”. He is the creator of “Mushu” the dragon from the film “Mulan”. After Disney, he worked with Big Idea Productions as a Supervising Director/ Co-creator for a Veggietales DVD series. His popular character design instruction books, “Creating Characters with Personality” and “Character Mentor” have become the most recognized books on designing characters and are required textbooks at many art schools around the world. Tom is half of the popular “The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast”, with his twin brother Tony, as well as creator of the annual, world-wide Instagram drawing event #MerMay and producer of the in-production 2d Animation documentary feature film, “Pencil Test”. Additionally, Bancroft is Artist in Residence of the new Animation undergraduate program at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, where he lives with his family.