Eric GoldbergSupervising Animator for Rabbit and the Backson Song

ERIC GOLDBERG (Supervising Animator for Rabbit and the Backson Song) is a veteran director, designer and animator who has worked extensively in New York, London and Hollywood, creating feature films, commercials, title sequences and television specials in both worlds of hand-drawn and computer animation. Goldberg served as supervising animator of the the trumpet-playing alligator Louis in the hand-drawn feature "The Princess and the Frog."

Goldberg's early forays into Super-8 filmmaking won top prizes in the Kodak Teenage Movie Awards, including 1974's Grand Prize of summer film courses at the University of Southern California. He received a full scholarship to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he majored in illustration and took supplemental animation and film courses.

One of his first professional jobs in freelance animation (while still in school) led to a job as a full-time assistant animator on Richard Williams' "Raggedy Ann and Andy." Following the film's completion, Williams invited Goldberg to work in his London studio as a director⁄animator on countless television spots. He had the good fortune to work with Ken Harris at that time, learning techniques honed during Harris' stint as Chuck Jones' greatest animator. Goldberg's association with Richard Williams continued in Los Angeles, where Goldberg served as director of animation on the Emmy®-winning "Ziggy's Gift," based on the popular newspaper cartoon.

Goldberg and wife Susan (a fellow animation artist, who has often served as art director on his projects) returned to London, where he co-founded Pizazz Pictures, a commercials studio with worldwide clientele. He directed spots utilizing diverse techniques-everything from cel-animation and brush-painting, stop-motion and pixillation, to live-action⁄animation combinations and digital compositing.

Disney recruited Goldberg for what turned out to be a ten-year run at the studio, beginning with his work as supervising animator on the wise-cracking Genie in "Aladdin." He went on to co-direct the successful "Pocahontas" and animated the feisty Danny DeVito-voiced satyr Phil in "Hercules." He then directed, wrote and animated two sequences for "Fantasia⁄2000" ("Carnival of the Animals" and "Rhapsody in Blue"), with wife Susan serving as art director on both.

Goldberg has experimented with ground-breaking computer animation techniques that replicates the fluidity and "squash-and-stretch" of the best hand-drawn animation. The effort resulted in the Tokyo DisneySea theme park attraction Magic Lamp Theater, which stars Goldberg's signature character the Genie in 3D computer animation. He also directed "A Monkey's Tale," a 12-minute high-definition cartoon for a Buddhist cultural center in Hong Kong.