Clive A. Smith

Clive Smith has been a force in the international animation community for over forty years. With partners Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, he co-founded Nelvana in the early seventies and kick-started the industry in Toronto. Together they grew the company from a three-man animation shop to one of the world's leading entertainment companies, now a division of Corus Entertainment. A British expatriate, Smith graduated from art school in London and after pursuing illustration, street art and music, began his film career in 1964 in a small West London studio animating The Beatles and Lone Ranger TV Series. In 1967, he came to Canada to work for Al Guest and Vladimir Goetzelman designing and animating short films and commercials. Shortly thereafter, Smith met his future Nelvana partners. Clive has produced and directed countless projects within Canada and internationally. His many credits include co-producing and directing the now classic animated feature, Rock & Rule, numerous television specials and series including Cosmic Christmas, The Devil and Daniel Mouse, Babar, Tintin, Rupert and Beetlejuice. As a result of Cosmic Christmas, George Lucas invited Smith to direct the first animated Star Wars special, A Wookie's Christmas, featuring CP30 and R2D2. Smith also directed the animated TV series Family Dog with producers Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton. In 1997, Clive directed the animated feature Pippi Longstocking, with Swedish and German co-production partners and a hugely complex animated film for South Korea's Expo '95 in OMNIMAX format with IMAX founder, Graeme Ferguson. Clive left Nelvana in 2001 to pursue more personal projects and has since been developing and writing feature films under his company banner, Musta Costa Fortune Inc. This includes development of an original animated musical with Pete Townshend, based on Townshend's original screenplay entitled The Boy Who Heard Music, and an original live action/animated feature The Rather Unusual Adventures of Ice Cream Girl & Mr. Licorice. Smith lives in Toronto and London, and continues to provide consulting and financing for many television, music and web-related projects, and is involved in his wife Melleny Melody and son Zachary Brown-Smith's businesses, Play Records and Play Deep Studios.