Kelly Asbury, ‘Shrek 2’ and ‘Uglydolls’ Director, Dies at 60

Kelly Asbury, an animation director identified for guiding “Shrek 2,” “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and most lately “Uglydolls,” has died. He was 60.

Asbury died peacefully Friday in Encino, California, following an extended battle with most cancers, a consultant for Asbury, Nancy Newhouse Porter, instructed TheWrap.

Asbury has a narrative credit score on Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and moreover wrote the screenplay and story for “Gnomeo & Juliet,” which he additionally directed in 2011. Asbury bought his begin at Disney between 1983 and 1995, contributing storyboards for Golden Age Disney movies similar to “The Little Mermaid,” “The Black Cauldron,” “The Rescuers Down Under” and extra.

Upon shifting to DreamWorks in 1995, his directorial debut was for the 2002 animated movie “Spirit,” which was nominated for an Oscar. He would even present further voices for “Shrek 2” and in “Shrek the Third.” “Shrek 2,” which he co-directed with Andrew Adamson, would in the end gross $928 million on the worldwide field workplace and was likewise nominated for an Oscar.

He had a short stint again at Disney as a narrative artist for each “Frozen” and “Wreck-It-Ralph,” and he was most lately credited as a narrative marketing consultant on “The Addams Family” and directed the STX movie “Uglydolls” each from final yr.

Outside of his work in movie, Asbury was a broadcast creator of a dozen totally different kids’s books and in addition wrote a 2003 non-fiction biography referred to as “Dummy Days: America’s Favorite Ventriloquists From Radio and Early TV.” The ebook included a foreword from Leonard Maltin and an Afterword from comic Jeff Dunham, and the ebook profiled artists similar to Edgar Bergen, Paul Winchell, Jimmy Nelson and Shari Lewis.

Asbury was born in Texas and is an alum of Lamar University earlier than transferring to the California Institute of the Arts in 1980 to check animation and movie.