Jules Engel

Jules Engel (; March 11, 1909 – September 6, 2003) was an American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, animator and teacher of Hungarian origin. He was the founding director of the experimental animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught until his death, serving as mentor to several generations of animators.

Early life Engel was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, and immigrated to Chicago when he was thirteen years old. He lived in Oak Park, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago, and attended Evanston Township High School, where he began developing his drawing style.

At the age of 17, Engel moved to Los Angeles seeking an athletic scholarship to either USC or UCLA. He lived in Hollywood while attending the Chouinard Art Institute and started to draw for magazines. He worked in the studio of a local painter sketching landscapes, Ken Strobel. Through his relationship with Strobel, he was referred to work as a background artists and as an inbetweening animator in Mintz Studio, the studio founded by Charles Mintz and his wife Margaret J. Winkler, which later became known as Screen Gems.

Career

1938–1941: Disney period In 1938, painter and art teacher Phil Dike helped him get an opportunity to work at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.

Bambi

David Hand, director of Bambi, asked Engel to work with him on the film. Engel did the storyboard for the sequence where Bambi first encounters the doe Faline. After completing the sequence, he did color sketches that diverged from the naturalistic color schemes being used in production.

During the 23rd Annual Annie Awards, in 1995, he received the Winsor McCay Award for his lifetime contributions to the field of animation.

Death Engel died of natural causes on September 6, 2003, in Simi Valley, California, at the age of 94.

Legacy In one of his final acts, in May 2003, Engel established the Jules Engel Endowed Scholarship Fund. The fund supports CalArts students in the character and experimental animation programs.

Engel was also a painter and produced a prolific body of oil abstract paintings, lithographs and other graphic artworks. During the late Forties and early Fifties his works were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the De Young Museum, and throughout his life he exhibited in more than sixty museums and galleries such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Walker Art Center. He was still working on a new series of lithographs just before his death.

Many of his students carried out his influence through their work, including John Lasseter, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, Stephen Hillenburg, Joanna Priestley, Christine Panushka, Peter Chung, Glen Keane, Ellen Woodbury, Eric Darnell, Mark Osborne, Steven Subotnick, Patrice Stellest, and Mark Kirkland.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, co-written, co-produced, and directed by Stephen Hillenburg (one of Engel's students), is dedicated to him.