Welcome to The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast.
This is a podcast where two ex-Disney animator brothers (who happen to be twins!) talk about their careers, other famous animation folk’s careers, creating, growing artistically, branching out…having dreams and making them come true! Our goals for the podcast is not just to talk about current events in animation (although we do that), or discuss the difference between art and commerce (we do that too) but mostly, we are here to EDUCATE, INSPIRE AND ENTERTAIN (not necessarily in that order). We strive to make a podcast like one that we wish we had when we were younger.

Why we do a podcast:
Tom and Tony love animation. In fact, we used to call each other every week, not to talk about our families, but to talk about what was going on at Disney, Sony, Dreamworks, animation projects we wanted to make or things we were working on currently. It’s not only our careers- it’s our passion! We’re going on 30 years working in the animation industry with all kinds of ups and downs and we love to talk about it. We have hundreds of professional friends and celebrities that we love to talk to and about. We do it for people just like you! We want to give back and celebrate the industry and art form we love. Join us!

Who we are:

Tom Bancroft
After leaving the prestigious California Institute of the Arts, I began my over 25 years in the animation industry, most of which was for Walt Disney Feature animation where he was an animator for 11 years on films like: “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin”, “Pocahontas”,“Mulan”, “Tarzan” and “Brother Bear” for which he animated characters like Young Simba, Jafar and Iago, Pocahontas, Rutt and Tuke and lead the design and animation of “Mushu” the dragon. 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 in the industry and are required textbooks at many art schools around the world.

Tony Bancroft
After going to CalArts with Tom, Tony also worked at Disney for over 12 years as an animator on Beauty and the Beast (Cogsworth), Aladdin (Iago), The Lion King (Pumbaa), The Emperor’s New Groove (Kronk) and as co-director of Mulan. At Sony Animation, he was the animation supervisor on Stuart Little 2. Besides work at the big studios he learned what it was not to make money but love what you do by owning and operating his own animation studio and now is an independent animation director and producer creating his own animated features. In his spare time, he makes babies with his wife (3 girls!) who will go on to rule the world…or at least their father. In his 2nd and 3rd spare times, Tony writes books like Directing for Animation, speaks at colleges and conventions and is (the better) half of the best podcast in the world, The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast.